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STEEET THOUGHTS 



BY 



:rev. henry m/^ dexter, 

PASTOR OF FIXE STKEET CHUKCH, BOSTON. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY BILLINGS. 



BOSTON: 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY^ 

117 Washington Street. 
185 9. 



t 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by 

Ceosby, Nichols, & Co., 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



cambridqe: 

ELECTROTYPE!) AND PRINTED BY METCALF AND COMPANT. 



'Eyoj be aixrjv rfjV TraiStai/ avecnv re elvai t^s ^/^vx^s, icaX 

dvaTravcriv tcov (boovTiOoiU. 

Julian. 

Ad minora me demittere non rccusabo. 

QUINTILIAN. 

"We '11 wander through the streets, and note 

The qualities of people. 

Shakespeare. 

Think naught a trifle, though it small appear ; 
Sands make the mountain, moments make the year, 
And trifles, life. Your care to trifles give, 
Else you may die ere you have learned to live. 

Young. 

It ought to be the endeavor of every man to derive his reflec- 
tions from the objects about him ; for it is to no purpose that he 
alters his position, if his attention continues fixed to the same 

^ ' Dr. Johnson. 



These straggling tides of life, that seem 
In wayward, aimless course to tend, 

Are eddies of the mighty stream 
That rolls to its appointed end. 

Bryant. 



INTEODUCTOEY NOTE. 



Among my earliest memories of literature is that of 
a sentence — out of a review of Mrs. Sedgwick, by the 
poet Bryant, if I am not mistaken — like this : '' He 
who goes about among men with his eyes open, Avill 
learn something better than the lore that is hidden in 
books." The remark made a deep impression upon 
my child-mind, and has verified itself with the expe- 
rience of every succeeding year. Many a knot of 
thought, which obstinately refused disentanglement 
elsewhere, has been loosened in the street ; and many 
a face, inexplicable at the dinner-table and in the draw- 
ing-room, has been comprehended in the involuntary 
revelations and cross-lights of the sidewalk. Conse- 
quently, crowded thoroughfares have become favorite 
thinking-places with me ; and as a parish and a pulpit 
well up toward one end of Washington Street, and an 
editorial chair far down toward the other, necessitate 

many miles of weekly transition exercise, I have not 
1* 



VI INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

been, of late years, without abundant opportunity to 
gratify my taste in this particular. 

The following "notes" of this kind of "travel" 
were written, from week to week during the last year, 
to fill a small space in each issue of the religious 
journal with Avhich I am connected. Having been 
asked for in the form which they now assume, I 
have not refused to comply with the request, — though 
deeply sensible of their inconsiderable claim to favor- 
able regard, — j^^^'^^y because it is believed that they 
have already exerted some slight influence for good, as 
they have been read in their original form, and partly 
because my heart is set upon the great work of se- 
curing, in connection with the future of my own 
Church, a place of worship in Boston where the 
masses of the people may hear the Gospel at a cost 
within their means; and should a generous public so 
far patronize this unpretending volume that any profit 
shall accrue to its author from its issue, that little rill 
will help to swell the stream "of many littles," which 
— if God please — may float our enterprise, and make 

it a success. 

H. M. D. 

Hillside, Roxburt, December 9, 1858. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. The JIan with the Bundle 9 

II. Whither are all, these People going? ... 13 

III. Midnight Scenes 17 

IV. A Winter Experience 22 

V. EuM DID it 26 

VI. The Old Man and his Son 31 

VII. Beards 35 

VIII. The Two Clerks 40 

IX. Three Funerals 44 

X. Street Smokers 50 

XI. Cheating Children 55 

XII. The Color of Gentlemen 58 

XIII. The Anniversaries 63 

XIV. Sensible Suits 67 

XV. The Tyranny of Strength over Weakness . 71 

XVI. Sound Advice 76 

XVII. The Poor Woman 80 

XVIII. Brighton on Sunday, P. M 85 

XIX. The Aristocracy of Gloves 88 

XX. Our Methuselahs 91 

XXI. Ambitious Architecture 94 

XXII. Such Weather! 99 

XXIII. What else are you? 102 

XXIV. Pat ^Ialoney 106 

XXV. The Old Apple-Man 110 

XXVI. A Male Irishman 113 



vm 



CONTENTS. 



XXVII. Strange Contrasts 116 

XXVIII. The Lost Child 120 

XXIX. Not Convenient, To-Day 125 

XXX. Ways of Walking 127 

XXXI. Gone to Seed! 132 

XXXII. Is SHE VERY Sick? 135 

XXXIII. Quack Religion 139 

XXXIV. Two Inches! 143 

XXXV. "I don't like my Minister" 147 

XXXVI. Too Late! 150 

XXXVn. Social Highness and Lowness 154 

XXXVIIL Speak to that Young Man! 158 

XXXIX. How Poor People buy 161 

XL. " Want-of-Confidence " Men 164 

XLI. Poor Phcebe Murphy 168 

XLII. Dead Leasees in State Street 173 

XLIIL " Such a Pretty Man ! " 176 

XLIV. Pastoral Calls 180 

XLV. The Man with a Hard Time 184 

XL VI. What the Lady had on 187 

XL VII. Business in Business Hours 191 

XL VIII. The Best need Watching 194 

XLIX. Cooler! 198 

L. Stove-Pipb Hats 202 

LI. Here a Little and there a Little ... 206 

m. Good Bye! 212 



STREET THOUGHTS 



I. 

THE ]VIAN WITH THE BUNDLE. 

" For a short essay, take a short subject," was 
the good old rule of the good old man under 
whose benign and brazen-spectacled eye fell our 
first efforts at " composition," years — sad years, 
sweet years — agone. To honor his memory by 
the application of his precept on the present 
occasion, we select for a subject The Man with 
THE Bundle, who is as short as "subjects" will 
average, — not being over five feet two. 

You have met him ? Burly, broad-shouldered, 
a little careless both in dress and gait, as if con- 
scientiously opposed to precision of any kind ; 
and his face — from the shining curve of the 
smooth-shaven chin to the gleam of the gold 
spectacles that sit astride his nose — beaming 
with exhaustless good-humor. About five in the 
afternoon is his hour, when you can generally 
see him heading as if homeward, and carrying 



10 STKEET THOUGHTS. 

thitherward a brown, paper-enveloped parcel. 
From long familiarity with this feature of his 
^personality, we had come to designate to ourselves 
his otherwise anonymousness as " the man with 
the bundle." It may have been imagination on 
our part, but, as we met him the other cold after- 
noon, his face seemed so absolutely radiant with 
the heat of general benevolence, that we thought 
the thermometer, at the corner of Milk Street, 
went up two degrees as he passed. We deter- 
mined to make an effort to know more about him. 

To-day our desire was gratified. Turning into 
Marsh's to purchase the goose-quill now between 
our fingers — we can't abide mineral pens — who 
should be standing at the counter, closing, at the 
same instant, the lid of a magnificent writing- 
case, and a bargain for its purchase, but our 
radiant-faced friend ! 

" To what address shall we send this ? " said 
the clerk, with a tone and manner indicating 
extreme respect. 

" Nowhere," responded the j)urchaser ; " I al- 
ways carry my own bundles." 

" Yes, Sir ; but this is heavy, and it will be a 
pleasure to us to send it." 

"Young man," replied the other, "I always 
love to take something home at night, to show 
my wife and children that I have n't forgotten 
them while at my business ; and I would n't give 



THE MAN WITH THE BUNDLE. 11 

a pin to make anybody a present without I car- 
ried it into the house myself. I want to see 'em 
take it. Besides, Sir, I never allow anybody to 
be bothered by sending things home for me that 
I can carry myself. I began life by lugging 
about parcels as a dry-goods man's boy, and 
many 's the weary mile of sidewalk I 've trudged, 
to carry a yard of ribbon or a paper of pins 
to somebody too proud or too lazy to carry it 
themselves. I have n't forgot my old thoughts, 
and, what's more, though times have changed 
with me since then, I ain't ashamed to be seen in 
the streets with a bundle." 

" Yes, Sir, but this is heavy." 

" No matter, I 'm strong," — and out he went, 
with such a glow on his face, that one could 
imagine it lighting up the now dim sidewalk 
rods ahead, as a locomotive-burner illuminates its 

track. 

Another well-known street face passed him 
in the door coming in. Purchasing a Congress 
knife, the new-comer said, in a sharp and dictato- 
rial tone, " Send that to my house (number fif- 
teen hundred and something, Washington Street) 
immediately. I shall want it as soon as I get 
home." 

" Two different men," suggested we, as the 
clerk closed the door after him. 

" Very," was his reply. " The man with the 



12 STREET THOUGHTS. 

bundle is Mr. , the honest owner of hundreds 

of thousands, and there never was a subscription- 
paper yet that did n't get his name for something 
handsome. The other man failed last week — 
all there was of him to fail — and is n't worth his 
salt ; but he had rather take the commercial dis- 
grace of failure any time, than the social disgrace 
of being seen in the streets with a bundle." 
Two different men, indeed ! We shall take off 

our hat the next time we meet Mr. on the 

sidewalk. Long may he live and carry bundles, 
to make people happy ! 



13 



II. 

WHITHER ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING? 

" Where can all these people have come from, 
and whither can they be going ? " was the excla- 
mation of a country friend of ours, as he gazed 
from our window upon the surging throngs that 
were rushing hither and thither, jostling each 
other, and almost choking the sidewalks, in our 
principal thoroughfare. 

The exclamation was natural to one accustomed 
to the quiet scenes and sparse population of a 
rural district, where so many persons are by no 
possibility got together in a twelvemonth, as can 
be seen from the corner of State and Washington 
Streets at almost any business hour of any busi- 
ness day of the year. And even those who are 
accustomed to the crowds of city life sometimes 
share in the feeling of wonder, as the stream of 
human forms glides on under their eye, as if fed 
by some copious and exhaustless fountain, back 
among the hills. Whence ? Whither ? Who 
can answer ? 

2 



14 STREET THOUGHTS. 

But the law of popular presence in the streets 
of a great city has more affinity with the inter- 
mittent ebbings and Sowings of the ocean, than 
with the regular and ceaseless gliding of a river. 
The tide sets in during the morning hours, 
through all the channels furnished by the rail- 
ways and countless avenues which converge from 
the whole country toward the city as a com- 
mon centre. From every side the thronging 
masses press toward the great mart, eager to 
rush into the fray of commerce. Some slight 
undertow makes back simultaneously toward the 
interior, of those who have concluded their visits 
and purchases and are homeward bound, or of 
others who are off for distant cities, or of still 
others, who seek, for a day, the freshness of the 
fields, as a relief from toil. 

And so, at noon, when the tide is at its height, 
it sways back and forth a little, as South and 
West-enders go home to dine, and return to fin- 
ish their day's work. But as the shadows begin 
to lengthen, the tide turns and retreats with a 
velocity which soon empties the business streets, 
and leaves them, for fifteen hours, as bare as the 
docks that line the shore when the ebb is lowest. 
Here and there a few men straggle up and down ; 
and lone news-boys — stuck on a miscalculation 
of their supply of dailies to the popular want — 
ever and anon wake the edioes by their unmusi- 



WHITHER AKE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING? 15 

cal cries, — " 'Ere 's Trav'ler, Transc'pt, Jurn'l, 
'Er'ld, Daily Courier-r-r, — one cent ! " But 
the people are not there, and all the travel now 
passing through bears no greater proportion to 
the fulness of the noon flood, than the few faint 
streams that struggle down among the wet sands 
after the subsiding sea, bear to the resistless tide 
that floated great navies up to the wharf's edge 
a little while before. 

No deeply religious man can look upon these 
tides of humanity without a feeling of sorrow ; 
for by their very aspect they certify to him that 
they are striving after the gold that perisheth, 
more than for durable riches and righteousness. 
Surely, every man walketh in a vain show ; 
surely, they are disquieted in vain. They seem 
as hot in the strife for wealth, as if the success of 
life depended upon its acquisition ! They forget 
that it is not all of life to live ! They forget that 
the open grave is a great deal nearer to most of 
their feet, than are the paths of fame or fortune ! 

The open grave ! Where will all these people 
be, when but a few years are come ? Look at 
them and answer ! How many cemeteries will 
have swung open their hospitable gates to receive 
them ? How many old family tombs and mouldy 
vaults will have unlocked their damp portals to 
admit them? How many distant churchyards, 
far among the mountains, will be checkered with 



16 STREET THOUGHTS. 

the mounds that are heaped over them ? How 
many will lie down with the great waves of the 
sea rolling for ever over them ? 

Well, it matters little where they lie ! The 
body can sleep peacefully anywhere after life's 
fitful fever. The problem of moment lies beyond 
the grave. It will be solved after they shall have 
reassembled from their distant and diverse en- 
tombments, and have put on the spiritual body. 
Then shall it be manifest who among them were 
wise, and considered their latter end ! Then 
shall it become for ever certain who among them 
shall be entitled to join those glorious throngs 
which crowd the streets of the celestial city, — 
concerning whom no one shall need to ask 
whence ? or whither ? 



17 



III. 

MIDNIGHT SCENES. 

It was midnight long ago, and by the hazy 
moonlight that faintly gleams upon the tower, we 
read two (a. m.) upon the Old South dial. Hark ! 
the bell strikes, pealing that hour. Once — twice ; 
no more ! The deep tones reverberate along the 
deserted thoroughfares until they are answered 
from remote and laggard steeples. It is two 
o'clock ! Old South says so ! Park Street says 
so! And, far off, you can hear Hollis Street, 
and the distant Shawmut, respond affirmatively ; 
and from farther away you can catch an answer- 
ing tinkle coming on the still night air from 
neighbor villages. 

It is an unwonted hour for us. Alas ! We 
have been watching — where no watching is 
needed any more. Wasted and worn, at last 
she rests ! The light of love has left her eye- 
balls ; her lips are silent. All through the long 
evening hours she lay dying, — breathing ever 
softer, speaking ever fainter, until, after a half- 

2# 



18 STREET THOUGHTS. 

hour's quietness, of a sudden her eye brightened 
with all its old fire, and her cheek flushed with 
its old beauty, and, leaning upon one elbow, 
she glanced round the room, and spasmodically 
said, ''I see the angels, — they are come now 
for me, and my Saviour waits, — good-by, dar- 
lings, all, — meet me," — and sank back motion- 
less. AYe thought she had fainted ; we chafed 
her hands and temples ; we held the most pun- 
gent aromas to her nostrils ; we spoke to her 
passionately ; we did all that skill and love could 
do, but to no purpose. She responded nothing 
to all our efforts ; our grief moved her not. Her 
words were true ; she was gone, with the angels. 

We knelt together around the bedside, where 
she lay so strangely still. With voices tremu- 
lous and intermittent, we thanked God for what 
she had been to us, — for the precious example 
left behind, — for the rich blessing of all her 
yearning and prayerful sympathy. We pledged 
ourselves anew to her Saviour and ours, — to a 
closer walk with God, to that final meeting which 
had lingered last upon her expiring conscious- 
ness. With swollen eyes, yet with comforted 
hearts, we rose up and went our saddened way. 

How strangely do the contrasts of life lie 
around us ! Upon the very first corner that we 
turned, plain in sight of the windows of the room 
where death had just entered, we heard the grat- 



MIDNIGHT SCENES. 19 

ing sound of merry-making. "We looked up to 
see the mansion blazing with light from every 
aperture, and, through the gauze that draped 
the windows of the drawing-room, we could see 
dancers madly careering in the hot embrace of 
the polka, while sounds of mirth and jollity ex- 
haled from every side. If one could throw down 
all the partitions that lie between, and let those 
dancers look upon the dead, what a petrifying 
shock would arrest their revelry ! Wait ! It will 
come by and by, — they shall all see it ! 

As we turned the next corner, we came upon 
a wee child cowering upon a door-step. " Are 
you lost ? " said we. 

"No, Sir, I ain't got nobody to lose me." 

" But you live somewhere ? " 

" Yes, but the old woman that kept me got 
shet in jail this day, and now I ain't got nobody, 
nor nothin'." 

" Are you going to stay there all night ? " 

"• No, Sir, but I 'm waiting for the watchman 
to come along, and may be he '11 let me sleep in 
the watch-'us. But he 's so long coming, I guess 
he 's asleep." 

" Come, poor thing, and I '11 take you to the 
police station," said we, almost glad of some em- 
ployment, which should change the current of 
thoughts. 

Leaving her at Court Square, we stumbled 



20 STREET THOUGHTS. 

next — turning into Washington Street — upon 
three young men, uproariously drunk, arm in 
arm meandering along the street, sometimes in 
the middle, and anon on either side, — graduates, 
for the night, of some one of those educational 
institutions, concerning which the city govern- 
ment and the " Maine Law " differ in senti- 
ment. We were in no mood to be annoyed by 
their vociferous rudeness, and so hurried on, 
until, as we went by the Old South, the bell 
struck the hour, as named above. 

There is something in the tone of a church- 
bell, — especially sounding in the night, — which 
has a soothing, yet very solemn influence, upon 
our mind. It makes us think of George Her- 
bert's "church-bells beyond the stars heard." 
And as we walked, we wondered. Can she hear 
that tone now ? What — how much — is earth to 
her now ? Is it in her consciousness, or only in 
her memory ? If it is still in consciousness, how 
it must sink when brought into direct compari- 
son with heaven ! And then we thought that, 
if departed eyes still glance downward upon all 
their old homes and haunts, one passage in the 
Bible must rise into more solemn significance to 
them than can be possible here : " Surely every 
man walketh in a vain show ; surely they are 
disquieted in vain ; he heapeth up riches, and 
knoweth not who shall gather them." Yes, — it 
must be so. 



MIDNIGHT SCENES. 21 

The street seems wholly empty now. Up and 
down, and on either side, all is still, — except as 
our own footfall wakes the echoes. Far as we 
can see, this great city — such a buzzing, toiling, 
moiling hive by day — is now just the same as if 
it were dead. Where you cannot see a paving- 
stone for the rush of vehicles for fifteen hours, 
you can now count them, every one. It is a 
great frame, without any picture in it. But if 
the spirits of Heaven look down upon State Street 
and the Exchange twelve hours hence, will not 
that great crowd seem, to their sharpened eye, 
even more than this scene now seems to us, a 
frame without any picture, — outside without 
any inside, — earth without any heaven ? 

He only lives ^ who lives for eternal life. All 
else is living death! 



22 



IV. 

A WINTER EXPERIENCE. 

Winter has thrown down upon our streets her 
white robe of triple thickness, and so muffled the 
town with its fleecy abundance, that one hardly 
knows where he is. The most well-known cross- 
ings have an altogether Arctic and foreign look. 
The street railroad is nowhere. The omnibi 
pitch about, like fishing-smacks in a short sea, 
and the manifold sleighs, cutters, pungs, et id 
omne genus ^ labor profoundly, somewhat as flies 
wriggle through thick molasses. The chief call 
to the door-bell is now to answer the shovel-boys, 
who have been known to agree, with great alac- 
rity, to transfer a six or eight foot bank from the 
sidewalk to the middle of the street for a dime, 
(when competition was superabundant,) and who, 
after shovelling half an hour, and thinning down 
the bank about as much as an able-bodied dog 
would paw away in the same length of time, 
have made off for parts unknown, and said noth- 
ing about the dime. 



A WINTER EXPERIENCE. 23 

Locomotion has much more of the " loco " than 
of the '' motion." Snow-slides are not uncom- 
mon, warning the street folk to maintain an up- 
ward eye as they grope along. Retail dry-goods 
merchants — who make their hay when the side- 
walks are full of crinoline — have a look of hope 
deferred. Spinsters, whose main industrial labor 
is the manufacture of street yarn, are laid up for 
a season, and that large branch of domestic in- 
dustry is obliged to " suspend " until more favor- 
able weather. 

Are the old winters coming back again ? We 
remember just such a snow-storm more than 
twenty years ago, — but we don't remember any 
since. Where is the oldest inhabitant ? Where 
is our Boston Mr. Merriam, — like him of Brook- 
lyn, — to sit up all night with the weather three 
hundred and sixty-six nights in the year, and 
sleep with one eye open all day, so that no move- 
ment of ether in the heaven above, or of mercury 
in the thermometer beneath, escapes his unweary- 
ing vigilance ? 

Human nature is naturally driven in-door s, 
and the streets are not so suggestive as is their 
wont. Still something is to be seen and learned 
everywhere. We learned something yesterday — 
which would be worth a trifle to somebody's 
peace. Passing by a well-known establishment 
upon one of our prominent thoroughfares, we 



24 STREET THOUGHTS. 

heard its proprietor turn, as he was closing the 
outside door, and direct a clerk to " go up to the 

house, and say to Mrs. (^his Mrs.) that he 

should be engaged that evening until very late 
with pressing business, and shouldn't be home 
to tea, and she need n't sit up for him." We 
thought nothing of it, until, a half-hour after- 
wards, we saw a party headed for Brighton, in a 
several-horse sleigh, who appeared to be a little 
jolly in advance, and among whom, as they sped 
past, we recognized, conspicuous among the fur- 
clad roisterers, a cigar with a spot of fire at 

one end and Mr. , " the man of pressing 

business until very late, and she need n't sit up 
for him," at the other. An hour later, having 
occasion to drive past a well-known " half-way 
house " in the suburbs, we saw the same equipage 
under its shed, and recognized the same party 
coming out from " liquoring," and, by the way 
the gentleman above mentioned measured his 
length in the snow-drift which surrounded the 
sleigh, in his efforts to get in, we concluded that 
his business was very "pressing" indeed, and 
that it would be quite as well, on the whole, not 
to sit up for him, especially as Brighton was yet 
to come. 

Alas, poor human nature ! As if money was 
to be got just to degrade one's self below the 
beasts that perish, but are not beasts enough to 
commit suicide by gulping bad liquor ! 



A WINTER EXPERIENCE. 25 

And alas for the inequality of justice 1 We 
saw, to-day, a policeman arrest a poor drunken 
man, with a coarse and torn coat, and march him 
off with great sternness to the lock-up, and ten 
minutes after ayo saw the same policeman bow 
with great respect, and a sympathizing and confi- 
dential wink, to a well-dressed inebriate, who had 
to be held into his sleigh by his companion to 
keep him from lurching overboard. 

Circumstances alter cases. 



26 



V. 

BUM DID IT. 

" I SHOULD think a man might enjoy himself 
in such a house as that." 

"Well, yes, — -if he can out of it. But, you 
may depend upon it, this man will find that his 
great rooms are haimted. He '11 hear noises 
there some of these nights, or I miss my guess." 

" Will ! What for ? " 

" Because, if his great freestone palace with 
plate-glass windows had the whole truth told 
about it, it would have one of Coroner Pratt's 
verdicts chalked all over it, so that every stone 
in the front would say confidentially to every 
passer-by, ' KuM did it.' " 

" You don't say so ! " 

" I do say so. Every dollar that has been paid 
for that lot, and all that magnificence that is piled 
upon it, has come, at first or second hand, in small 
coin, out of the pockets of poor, thirsty drunkards. 
That house is the price of more murders than 
there are days in a year ; and if some of those 



RUM DID IT. 27 

ghosts don't haunt him, then there ain't so much 
justice in things as I believe there is. I tell jou 
I 'd rather live in a cave on cold potatoes without 
any salt, than live there, fine as it looks ! " 

Thus communed two men in our hearing, the 
other day, as, in front of us, they passed one of 
the most showy mansions newly built in one of 
our fashionable quarters. It is a goodly house to 
look upon. Architects and builders have done 
their best, and the result is '' a credit to the city." 
We had often admired it ; but the suggestive 
remarks of our unknown friend set us on a dif- 
ferent train of thinking. "We remembered read- 
ing, a short time since, in some work of Eastern 
travel, a description of the vandalism which has 
not merely rifled old shrines of their ornaments, 
but has even torn down the most exquisitely 
sculptured temples, and used the delicately carved 
blocks to pile up rude hovels for the shelter of 
native banditti. And as we gazed again at this 
towering mansion, it seemed to transform itself 
before our eyes into just such a structure, — 
built from the dilapidated and ravished remnants 
of innumerable "temples of the living God." 
Here is visible a shattered shaft; there lies a 
crushed column ; yonder protrudes the curve of 
a Corinthian capital, — all once humanity, — ly- 
ing helter-skelter, heads and points, — a confused 
and mournful jumble, breathing of rapine and 



28 STREET THOUGHTS. 

violence ; — a thousand beautiful things disman- 
tled and destroyed to make a shelter for ruthless 
selfishness to occupy for a little tarrying-place on 
its way to its long and terrible account. 

" Haunted ! "— he will haunt it himself ! Mem- 
ory will live there with him ; and memory will 
haunt it ! Imagination will dwell there with him ; 
and imagination will haunt it ! God will dwell 
there with him ; and God's vengeance will haunt 
it ! A palace ? Nay ; rather call it a pandemo- 
nium ! 

Will he die there ? In which room ? Which 
four walls shall be compelled to witness that 
scene ? Which door shall the avenging Furies 
seize and shake as they hurry to dip their burning 
talons in his heart's blood ? Talk about the 
horrors of death by delirium tremens ! If you 
want to see horrors, sit down by the death-bed of 
the man that manufactures delirium tremens, 
and sells it by the cask and glass, — sells it in 
spite of supplicating wives and starving children 
and a frowning God, — sells it in spite of all 
heaven and all earth and all hell, for the " fair 
living profit " that he makes ! If some honest 
angel would paint a portrait of the proprietor of 
this palace as God sees him, and hang it " in a 
good light" over the fireplace of the library, 
would he stay in the house to face it, think you? 
Nay, what if some prophetic pencil should limn 



RU3I DID IT. 29 

the scene of his own last agony, that is coming, 
and suspend it, like a great historical picture, 
in that drawing-room, — would he stay there to 
realize it, think you ? Gray hairs are already 
here and there upon him. It will be history 
soon ! 

What new light would break upon our appre- 
ciation of men and things if every house in 
Boston — say only, every house in Beacon Street 
and its kindred avenues — had advertised upon 
its outer walls its secret history ! Would there 
be any symbols of the old slave-traffic there ? 
Would there be any sharp jDractice in note-shaving 
hinted thereon ? Would there be any symptoms 
of the Coolie trade ? 

If every trafficker in Boston knew that to- 
morrow morning there would appear, patent to 
public gaze, written ineffaceably, by the finger 
of the God who cannot lie, upon the outer wall 
which shelters him, the exact and entire truth 
in regard to all the story of his gains, — let 
it canonize him or cauterize him as it might, — • 
would all of our business men have a good 
night's rest ? Would they, as a general rule, go 
out with an untroubled gaze to read the record, 
and invite their stranger customers round to look 
at it, as an inducement to confidence in their 
dealings ? If it could be known that, a year 
hence, such a record would be made of all the 

3# 



30 STREET THOUGHTS. 

transactions of the year, would it not modify 
some methods of trade ? 

Yet there is a day coming when a much more 
public exposition shall be made, with terrible 
exactitude, of all the affairs of life ! Why is not 
that day more kept in view ? 




I HAVE SEEN A CURIOUS CHILD." 

The Excursion. 



31 



VI. 

THE OLD ]MAN AND HIS SON. 

" I SAY, Frank, who is that old fellow with a 
second-hand hat, and a great-coat that looks as if 
it had been made by the Queen of Sheba's tailor 
as a present to Solomon's gardener, and had been 
in the family ever since, who keeps eyeing you 
so closely from the other side of the street? " 

" I don't know, I am sure. I never saw him 
before." 

" Well, I hope he ain't a policeman in disguise, 
who is after you for some of your pranks. Take 
care, — good by," — laughingly said the first 
speaker, as he turned off into a side street, and 
left his viseed friend to walk on before us. 

From the movements of this " unexceptionably 
got-up" youth thus preceding us, we very soon 
became satisfied that, despite his denial, he had 
seen the old man on the other side before, and 
was in momentary expectation of seeing him 
again. His eye shot uneasy glances across ; and 
as that venerable and fine-looking, though very 



\ 

32 STREET THOUGHTS. 

plainly and imfashionably dressed person, began 
to show symptoms of crossing over, he cast a 
hurried look up and down the street, apparently 
to see if any of his boon companions were in 
sight anywhere, — to witness and report the dis- 
grace of the impending interview. As the two 
faces, young and old, were thus projected in pro- 
file before us, as they exchanged stares, we made 
up our mind that the same blood was in both, 
and were querying the reason for their singular 
demeanor, when we heard a loud voice approach- 
ing from the middle of the street. 

" Francis Ebenezer, my son, dew tell if that 
are 's you. I 've been a watchin' on you this 
haaf-hour ; and you 've got on such a kind o' 
spruced-up riggin', and so much hair on your 
countenance, that I could n't tell, ef I 'se to be 
skinned, whether 't was you or not ; and yet I 
'most knew that are nose couldn't be nobody 
else's. How de dew ? " 

A fine young man that, coolly to deny that he 
ever before saw his own father because that 
father happened to be dressed more sensibly 
(though less a la mode) than himself! But 
there are some men — and women - — who appear 
to think that the attention of the entire universe 
is concentrated exclusively upon them, whenever 
they show themselves upon the sidewalk. As a 
matter of course, a proper respect on their part 



THE OLD MAN AND HIS SON. 33 

for the said universe, and for themselves, requires 
that they exercise the utmost care as to costume, 
conduct, and companionship, that no suspicion of 
commonness of any sort may attach to them. 
Three hundred and sixty-five pairs of gloves per 
annum are essential to their peace of mind. Their 
accumulation of pantaloons is prodigious. Their 
superfine hats are renewed or ironed with a fre- 
quency very gratifying to the hatters, and ex- 
tremely encouraging to that branch of domestic 
industry. To see one of them, when he has been 
fully prepared, and indulges the town with his 
society for a promenade, you would suppose that 
one of those dummies — wooden within and 
waxen without — which Parisian artistes use for 
the display of their handiwork had been ani- 
mated and endowed with locomotion, or that Oak 
Hall liad sent forth a promenading advertise- 
ment ; and you feel a well-nigh irresistible incli- 
nation to pin a label, calling attention to 34 
North Street, to his coat-tail. 

Non omnia possumns omnes, says Yirgil. We 
cannot all do everything. It is a great truth. 
Peacocks have more tail than brains. And, if 
we have read natural history aright, those four- 
footed beasts, and fowls, and creeping things, 
which have the most astonishing outsides, com- 
pensate therefor by internal leanness, insipidity, 
and uselessness. The same great law jDrevails in 
regard to humanity. We have seen old books, 



34 STREET THOUGHTS. 

wherein, by the similarity in the shape of the sixth 
and nineteenth letters of the alphabet, the words 
foppij and sappy could with difficulty be distin- 
guished. It struck us as an instructive fact. A 
fop-head and a " sap-head" are much alike in sev- 
eral other things beside their orthography. And 
that a man who prides himself mainly upon " a 
good port and bearing in society " shovild ignore 
his own father, if he happen to be unfashionably 
dressed, is a thing to be naturally expected, be- 
cause love to parents is an affair of the heart; 
and a dandy has no more heart than a dummy 
aforesaid, which the carpenter knocks up out of 
common stuff, without much regard to the inte- 
rior, but merely to furnish a scaffolding to sup- 
port the goodly and simpering outside, upon 
which the tailor and the hatter and the boot- 
maker can advertise their wares. 

But it is a sad thing to see a young man given 
over to the clothes-mania. '' Once a coxcomb, 
always a coxcomb," was a maxim of Dr. John- 
son ; and he who begins life by fearing to go 
into the street in any comely, clean, and com- 
mon-sense clothes, lest some fool or other should 
think he is not as well dressed as he ought 
to be, will be very apt to die, eventually, leav- 
ing the largest part of his assets in the shape 
of tailors' bills, the largest part of his influence 
among the old-clo' men, and the largest part of 
his memory among the denizens of the street. 



35 



VII. 

BEARDS, 

"Is it possible ! -^ is it possible! — can it be 
you, my old friend ? I feared you were in your 
grave ! " 

"It is I, myself!" 

" But so stalwart, and round-faced, and robust, 
and with such a blessed beard, — you, who used 
to be so hollow-chested and lantern-jawed! 
Why, I cannot believe my eyes! And yet the 
old facial landmarks are there, — it must be 
you!" 

"His I, myself!" 

" But what saved you ? Have you been cod- 
livered back to health ? Or how was it ? " 

" The ' blessed beard ' did most of it, though 
the wheels were greased a little with the nause- 
ous extract to which you allude, and the whole 
was somewhat propelled by a good saddle-horse 
between my legs six hours per day." 

" Come home with me, and enlarge." And the 
first speaker drew off his resuscitated friend by 
the arm, roimd the corner of Winter, up toward 



36 STREET THOUGHTS. 

Beacon Street, and the regions beyond, — leaving 
us to admire the fair and manly proportions of 
the "blessed" remedy first named, and to pon- 
der upon the general subject. We concluded — 
for the statistics of the thing — to count the 
beards, full and otherwise, met from State to 
Chester, on our way up Washington Street, at an 
hour when the street was full. It strained our 
counting machine to the utmost, and we may 
have blundered a little in the minutias, but here 
are the " documents," for what they are worth. 
We met five hundred and forty-three men. Of 
these, one had a countenance smooth-shaven 
throughout, glossy beaver, gold spectacles, and 
white cravat, with jet-black drapery, and was, in 
short, a thoroughgoing specimen of the D. D., got 
up on the most correct and elaborate principles, 
without regard to expense. Thirteen were young 
men, whose tarry at Jericho had, as yet, been 
unproductive of appreciable results. Four were 
men of the old school, smooth-shaven, with the 
exception of slight tufted promontoi'ics jutting 
downward from either ear, as if designed for a 
compromise measure between the good old doc- 
trine and modern radicalism. Twenty-seven had 
what used to be called " whiskers," looking very 
much like straps to hold their hair on. Thirty 
wore the regular penthouse French moustache, — 
smooth-shaven beside, — looking as if by far the 
most convenient method of feeding them would be 



BEARDS. 37 

to hang tlicm up by the heels and slide necessary 
victuals down the inverted sugar-scoop thus pre- 
sented, into the orifice of the xuouth. Forty-three 
wore the moustache, with a fancy tuft upon the 
clihi, but with smooth cheeks, — looking as if a 
semicolon would be the best extant representation 
of their idea of facial adornment. Eighty-seven 
had the upper lip shorn, and the beard clipped 
close, and shaven down an inch or so from the 
crown of the under lip, in crescent form, — as if 
they had tied up their jaws in a hair muffler, in 
consequence of the toothache. Eighty-nine had 
full beards, moustache included, more or less 
flowing, and looked like sensible men, as God 
meant to have them look. The remaining tivo 
hundred and forty-nine wore the full beard, with- 
out the moustache, and looked like sensible men 
who had not quite moral courage enough to do a 
just and natural and healthy thing, for fear of 
the reproach of dandyism, or of censure from 
those whose " weak consciences " are apt to be 
offended by any attempt to follow nature which 
leads people across-lots with regard to the con- 
ventional fences which men have builded. 

Such a census five years ago would have pro- 
duced far other results. But the progress of 
sound sense, Avhen its attention is turned to a 
subject, though slow, is generally sure. And 
many a man, who would then as soon have gone 

4 



38 ' STREET THOUGHTS. 

down town of a morning undressed, as unshaven, 
now shaves only with the scissors. 

There seem to be two prominent reasons which 
influence the lingerers in this heard movement. 
Some of them say they think it uncomely, and 
others allege that it is an unfriendly departure 
from the good old customs of our fathers. 

To this it may first be replied, that what 
is natural is always, in the long run, comelier 
than that which is unnatural. The mere fact 
that our eyes get temporarily accustomed to 
tight-waisted women, does not prove that corsets 
are an element of female beauty. That which 
we see every day, and thus come to associate 
with those whom we love and admire, seems 
pleasant to us from that association, however 
ungainly it may be in itself ; but simple adher- 
ence to nature is always pleasing. Go into 
galleries of old portraits, and while all those 
faces and forms which are peruked, or peri- 
wigged, or frizzled, or furbelowed unnaturally, 
according to the freak of fashion at the moment 
of their date, seem now unnatural, unpleasant, 
and even ludicrous, you will find that those 
which have the hair parted and put away plainly 
over the ears, and the person wrapped in some 
simple drapery, are now as beautiful and grace- 
ful as if taken yesterday. The true method of 
putting the question of beauty, with regard to 



BEARDS. 39 

the beard, is to ask what is nearest nature, and 
sinaplest. Whatever that may be, men ought to 
like best, and will like best, as a matter of per- 
manent taste, without regard to the accidental 
mode of the moment. And there can be no 
question that this is a full beard and moustache, 
kept clean and comely. The most rabid advocates 
of razors would stand aghast, if our Saviour were 
to revisit the earth in the costume of a modern 
divine, with smooth face, and stiff collar with 
white cravat. 

And, with regard to the matter of fealty to the 
fathers, we have only to open tlie early volumes 
of our own history, to discover that fealty to the 
Pilgrim fathers would lead us to full beard and 
moustache, and that from them back to Ridley, 
and Wickliffe, and Knox, and Melancthon, and 
Camerarius, and Beza, and Calvin, the same 
custom was well-nigh universal. Our immediate 
fathers — seduced from the good old natural 
and manly paths in this respect, by that foolish 
fashion which originated in the fact that Louis 
XIII. ascended the throne of France when only 
nine years old, and his courtiers shaved them- 
selves out of foppish adulation to his beardless 
face — are the men who are justly exposed to 
this charge of lack of fealty to the old times ; 
and we, their sons, who are retracing their un- 
natural and unmanly steps of departure, are the 
true followers of the old heroes of the Church. 



40 



VIII. 

THE TWO CLERKS. 

" Yaas, it IV as late this morning when I got 
home, let me say to you ; and I 've been so 
tired with dancing all night, that I 've done 
nothing but yawn about the store all day." 

" What did the old man say ? or did n't he 
notice it ? " 

" Notice it ! I guess he did n't do any thing- 
else ; but I told him I sat up with a sick friend 
from the country, who was here alone, and dan- 
gerous bad. And don't you think the old hunks 
actually gave me a quarter to go into Jameson's 
and get a bowl of hot tea to brighten me up. 
Was n't that rich ? " 

" Was n't it though ? my ! " and the speaker, 
upon the excitement of the thought, proceeded 
to cut a " pigeon- wing " extemporaneously upon 
the sidewalk, to the dismay of a meek-faced 
maiden, whom it crowded uncomfortably against 
the wall, and to the discomfiture of our third en- 
ergetic attempt to get out of his cigar-smoke by 



THE TWO CLERKS. 41 

edging by, without pitching into the street bodily. 
Thus hemmed up, or dammed up, by the un-get- 
round-ability of the obstruction in the narrow 
part of our principal thoroughfare, there was 
nothing for it but to follow quietly behind, and 
take the cigar-smoke and the " revelations," as 
they might be graciously imparted by the two 
slender-limbed but loud-voiced swaggerers, who, 
arm in arm, were on their way to the theatre, as 
it afterward appeared. 

" Jim," said the second speaker, as he subsided 
from his pirouette , '-' how you contrive to dress so 
well as you do on your salary, and go it at such 
a rate besides, is beyond my guessing 1 Got any 
suburban resources ? Is the paternal in funds ? 
Or how is it?" 

"Why, no, Joseph, to be candid, — and I 
don't mind it with you^ — I have n't got any 
father, and my mother is as poor as Job's turkey, 
and I expect is waiting anxiously for some future 
time when she can get a little something out of 
me. So I don't absorb there ! " 

'' Well, how do you do it ? There ain't a bet- 
ter-dressed fellow on Hanover Street, and you are 
always at the " Boston,' or the ' Howard,' or at 
billiards, or at a dance-hall, or somewhere." 

" Yaas, I suppose you are right about that." 

" And you always pay, too, and are always 
flush. How much is your salary, any way ? " 

4* 



42 STREET THOUGHTS. 

"Five hundred, — nominally, that is. But, 
then, you know, of course, the old man knows 
that, with my habits, I don't, and can't live on 
three times that; and he expects that I get it 
somehow and out of somebody, — he don't care 
who, if it ain't him." 

" Well, suppose it is him ? " 

" Waall, suppose it is. You don't suppose it 
is anybody else, do you ? You are old enough 
for that, I take it, ain't you ? You have to live 
yourself, don't you ? " 

" Why, Jim, to own up unanimously, I have a 
little help from my father, and so I screw along 
with my three hundred for the present, and live 
in hopes of more soon." 

" Yaas, Joseph, — pleasant way to live, that. 
Well now I '11 tell you how I live. My old man 
gives me, as I said, five hundred. He expects 
me on that to be dressed as well as the best, so 
as to do honor to his counter, secure custom, and 
so on, — which, of course, I proceed to do. Don't 
he know what a Calrow coat costs, and a Cook 
hat, and a pair of Gan's boots ? Heh ! Don't 
he wear 'em ? To be sure, he knows that three 
times what he gives me won't pay my bills. I 
tell you he must know it, and he knows I don't 
have an honest copper but what he gives me ; 
and yet he 'd turn me off to-morrow if I did n't 
dress as well as I do. I tell ye, he 's an old head. 



THE TWO CLERKS. 43 

— he's a member of the chnrch, he is, — he 
knows a thing or two. He thinks I win enough 
gambhng to keep myself along, and he don't care 
a counterfeit cent if I do, if it saves him some- 
thing for my fit-out, and if I don't goug-e him in 
consequence. He keeps a sharp look-out for that, 
I '11 bet you a dollar. But, let me say to you, 
that, if I do sivinge a little at cards and billiards 
once in a while, I ain't such a fool as to do it for 
his benefit. I earn him two thousand dollars a 
year, clear cash, and if he don't give it to me by 
hook, I '11 see to it that he does by crook, that 's 
all. Noiv do you understand ? " 

" But, how can you, Jim ? Don't he keep too 
sharp a look-out for them kind of things ? " 

" Joseph, there is an old proverb in reference 
to the removal of a skin from a cat, which may 
have come to your ears." 

" Come, tell a fellow how you operate ? To be 
candid, it would be mighty convenient for me to 
know that same." 

" I '11 tell you some time. Now for something 
pleasanter." And the hopeful pair turned into 
the tessellated vestibule of the " Boston," leaving 
a clear passage for us to pass on, and thoughts 
enough to last us home. 

Perhaps you can guess what some of them 
were. 



u 



IX. 



THREE FUNERALS. 



Three funerals ! Three companies of mourn- 
ers going about the streets toward the same place 
of graves, on the same sad errand, — yet how 
different in aspect ! We met them all, and, as 
they passed slowly by, had time to conjecture 
something of the reality that was within the 
outer processional paraphernalia of woe. 

The first, indeed, had little to mark its fune- 
real purpose, — nothing to attract toward it the 
gaze of passers-by. It was but a single hackney- 
coach, of the poorer sort ; and if we had not 
caught a glimpse of a face which could belong 
to none other than a young mother in her agony, 
and had not seen the little coffin lying upon the 
front seat, we should not have recognized the 
errand on which it was bound. The throng of 
drays and wagons hedged up its progress for a 
moment just against the spot where we were 
standing, and gave us time to comprehend enough 
to compel our deep and heartfelt sympathy. They 



THREE FUNERALS. 45 

were but two, — father and mother, alone with 
their dead. The young man — perhaps thirty- 
five — had a low English face, such as one sees 
hanging around the door of a London gin-palace, 
— freckled and red, but not with weeping, — and 
was, to all appearance, so far intoxicated as to 
comprehend but dimly the import of the occa- 
sion. When the coach, in its attempt at extri- 
cation, suddenly started back from the position 
where it had been wedged in among other vehi- 
cles, he fell over, by the sudden jerk, upon tlie 
little coffin before him, and was only raised by 
the aid of his weeping companion, whose grief 
burst forth afresh, and whose mild reproof, " 
William ! " had such an intonation in it as would 
have gone to the bottom of any man's heart who 
retained possession of his proper humanity. She 
was answered by a gruff oath directed toward 
the driver. She turned from him, and cast 
toward heaven such a gaze of agony and suppli- 
cation, as comforted us with the hope that she 
knew where to go for sympathy in those sorrows, 
which, it was obvious, were manifold, and pressed 
heavily upon her. They were poor ; their dress, 
and the cheapness of the casket in which their 
lost jewel was lying, betokened that. Doubtless 
they were recent emigrants from fatherland, who 
had been here only long enough to suffer from 
loneliness and poverty, not long enough to make 



46 STREET THOUGHTS. 

any friends. God bless thee, mother, and com- 
fort thee ; for thy heart aches, and if Heaven 
help thee not, thou hast poor comfort of earth ! 

A little further on, a dark-draped funeral car, 
with its cortege in all the sombre pom]o and cere- 
mony of the most elaborate obsequies, turns into 
Washington Street, round the corner of Boylston, 
and blocks the way. Far as the eye can see, 
toward the Common, it extends, with its showy 
coaches and prancing horses. The undertaker — 
he who sits upon the box of the first carriage, 
with the coachman — is at the head of his profes- 
sion, and has disregarded expense. Through the 
glass sides of the dashy hearse can be seen the 
burial-case, with its dark cloth, and shining orna- 
ments, and the great silver plate, which bears 
engraven the name and age of the departed, — a 
well-known name ; an advanced age. The first 
carriage, with the nearest mourners, has its 
shades drawn, and one cannot see whether it is 
full or empty. The second contains two men 
and two women, in half mourning, and with 
sufficient consciousness of passing events to ex- 
press considerable curiosity as to the cause of the 
annoying delay in getting on, and the probable 
relation of the cars of the Metropolitan Railroad 
thereto. The next three carriages contain, we 
should conclude, miscellaneous friends, engaged 
in miscellaneous converse. Then come three or 



THREE FUNERALS. 47 

four filled with State Street faces, — business 
acquaintances of the deceased, — who drop an 
occasional word, as they drive by, with regard 
to the probable " amount of his property," and 
" whether he has given anything to public chari- 
ties." One old man is gratifying his limited 
audience with various reminiscences of the ear- 
lier days of him whose body is going on before 
them toward the grave, and of his acquaintance 
with some of the methods in which he made such 
great gains. It would be difficult to decide, 
from anything in the appearance or language of 
the occupants of the remaining coaches, whether 
they are going to a funeral or to an ordinary 
afternoon ride. It would be quite safe to say, 
even if one could lift the blinds of the first car- 
riage and take an observation, that there are 
more tears in one of those sad eyes which are 
gazing, in mute anguish, upon the little pine 
cofhn in the old hackney-coach far ahead, than 
there are in all this lengthened train, — more 
real grief in her poor, aching heart than in those 
of all who are in any manner affected by the 
departure of him who is being buried with such 
imposing state. 

But here another procession crowds almost 
upon the heels of the last. It is a long one, too. 
We count fifteen carriages, from the coach which 
leads, to the open wagon which brings up the 



48 STREET THOUGHTS. 

rear. A son of Erin is going to his rest, and his 
compatriots crowd thickly after him to do him 
honor. A brick fell on his head from a high story, 
and killed him — withont a word. The priest 
has performed his last office, and received his fee. 
The wake has been duly solemnized; and now, 
three on a seat, the mourners are doing the last 
honors to his corpse. 

The hungry cemetery will receive them all 
with equal alacrity. The little babe will lie down 
in the " common ground " ; the Irishman will 
repose in the " consecrated corner " ; and the 
millionnaire will sleep in his private tomb, built 
long ago by himself upon a site selected for the 
fine view which it has of the distant hills, — as if 
his eyes were to look upon them ! The same sky 
will bend itself above them ; the same stars look 
down by night. Earth will claim them with im- 
partial inexorableness, — ashes to ashes, dust to 
dust ! Other millionnaires and other laborers and 
other babes shall come and lie down by their 
side ! 

And when the trumpet shall sound, and the 
dead shall be raised, and these three who went 
to the grave in the same hour, though not in the 
same company, shall awake out of the dust, 
which shall look up with meekest hope and most 
trusting joy to catch the glance of " Him who sit- 
teth on the throne " ? Shall it be he whom the 



THREE FUNERALS. 49 

priest has certified to have a right to heaven ? or 
he who left so many millions for those who came 
after him ? or the clear babe that but opened its 
tender ear on earth to hear Jesus say, " Suffer 
the little children to come unto me, and forbid 
them not, for of such is the kingdom of God," 
and closed its eyes, and died ? 



50 



STREET SMOKERS. 

'' I WOULD n't be seen in the street with a man 
that smoked anything less than a first-class fancy 
brand, at five cents apiece by the dozen ! " 

" Well, I know they taste better, and it looks 
better, — but how can you afibrd it ? It makes 
something of a little bill in a week, if you smoke 
much." 

" I make it a rule always to smoke in the 
street, and as I make — evenings included — 
several journeys down town and back, a day, I 
never get through with less than a half a dozen ; 
though, to be sure, when it storms, or is very 
dark, and there is n't anybody round to see, 
why, it don't pay, and I don't smoke ; but 
I average near three dozen a week, the year 
round." 

" Three dozen ! That — let me see — is nigh 
on to two dollars a week ; near a hundred dol- 
lars a year! How do you contrive it? Why, 
my salary is the same as yours, and yet I feel as 



STREET SMOKERS. 51 

if I had been awfully extravagant, if I go more 
tlian two of these five-centers a day ! " 

" Well, what 's the use of living in Rome, if 
you don't ' do as the Romans do,' as Shakespeare 
says ? ^Tis expensive ; but, as Ike Potiphar, or 
George W. Marvel, — which was it ? — had it be- 
fore the Mercantile : ' Something must be con- 
ceded to society.' I make it up in other ways. 
I 'd rather go without one meal a day, than my 
street cigar, — it gives a fellow such a free and 
easy and well-developed sort of air." 

"Well-developed sort of air!" Yes, thought 
we, as we perforce inhaled a direct blast from 
the speaker's lungs as we crowded by, — that is 
not a bad way to state it ! We have always 
thought that the young men whom we have seen 
puffing along the sidewalks, like puny locomo- 
tives with weak boilers and a very low head of 
steam, had a " well-developed sort of air." The 
chicken stage is evidently outgrown, and young 
roosterhood is reached. Those slight ties which 
bind " un-developed " men to mothers and sis- 
ters, and to all womankind for their sweet sake, 
have been rudely ruptured by their immense 
" social progress," and they enjoy exhaling the 
plague of their poisoned and fetid breath under 
the bonnets of feminine passers-by, as if they 
were doing them the greatest favor in the world, 
and momentarily expected to hear from their 



52 STREET THOUGHTS. 

red lips the Eastern supplication, " Let it please 
your Highness graciously to spit upon me, and I 
shall die in peace." 

These fellows — to quote a verse from the 
Canticles — " come out of the wilderness like 
pillars of smoke, as if perfumed with myrrh and 
frankincense, and with all powders of the mer- 
chant," and they scatter odors along the pave, as 
freely as if employed by the health department 
to fumigate the city. 

Now, we never smoked a cigar in our life, and 
are therefore, possibly, a poor judge of the mat- 
ter ; but we will venture to say, notwithstanding, 
that it always seemed to us, if we did love to- 
bacco-smoke, we should prefer to manufacture 
our own. It may be an unjust prejudice which 
we entertain against second-hand articles, but we 
would quite as lief go into Brattle Square, and 
don the first greasy and half-worn suit there 
exposed for sale, as take a second-hand article of 
smoke from the private manufactory of a street 
loafer. 

It is said there are differences in the grade of 
the article, and we believe it is generally under- 
stood that a cigar which costs a good deal of 
money is more fragrant than a cheap twist, and 
that anything which can be rolled up and burnt 
between the lips, without the aid of a machine, is 
more balmy than that which is burned in clay. 



STREET SMOKERS. 53 

As a mere outsider, we never could appreciate 
the difference. We have walked after a Paddy 
with a pipe, and behind a Cockney with a cheroot, 
and, all things considered, we hold the former to 
be the least nauseous of the two. The Irishman 
smokes in the street in a clever, self-possessed, 
and business-like manner, as if it was a great 
comfort to /u'w^, and he did n't mean any harm to 
anybody ; but, having pressing engagements with 
a hod for ten hours out of the twenty-four, he 
presumed so far upon the public forbearance as 
to make the most of his brief leisure. The street 
snob, on the contrary, does it for effect. He goes 
without his dinner, or takes it in an abridged 
and pocket edition, so as to afford to expand, on 
Washington Street, in all the glory of a first- 
class Havana. 

He mumbles it a long time between his lips, as 
feeling that it is an investment too important to 
be used up in haste. He "begs the favor of a 
light," with a gesture which reminds one. of an 
organ-monkey asking for a cent. He knocks off 
the accumulating ashes with his little finger, as 
if that member had lateral spasms. He takes it 
out of his mouth, ever and anon, with an air 
like that of a clarionet-player, waiting for his 
score to come round, in an orchestra. He puffs 
straightways, and sideways, and anyways, and 

5* 



54 STREET THOUGHTS. 

all ways, as if intending to be se^n of men, and 
women, at all events. 

What cares he for law? Does n't everybody 
break the law about smoking and drinking? 
What cares he for the comfort of the fifty per 
cent of men, and the ninety-nine per cent of 
women, whose occasions call them through the 
streets, who abominate the sickening odor ? 
Tom and Dick and Harry — who are the gentry 
of the town in his estimation, and to follow 
humbly and afar in whose wake is his daily 
struggle and nightly dream — smoke in the 
streets, and so he smokes there, and enjoys it; 
and supposes that he creates a sensation ; and 
that that low hum which he often perceives about 
the city, among the jar and conflict of its various 
sounds, is a subdued buzz of stifled admiration of 
his manly appearance as he vapors along ! 

Bah ! he is a nuisance, a whole nuisance, and 
nothing but a nuisance ! A street smoker — so 
says a naturalist friend of ours (it is a hard word, 
and a little dubious in its redolence, but we must 
use it, for there is no other that is up to the 
mal-odorous mark) — is the skunk of civiliza- 
tion! 



55 



XI. 

CHEATING CHILDREN. 

"Now come along, — that's a good boy, — and 
when we get home, I will give you all sorts of 
goodies." 

" What '11 ye give me ? " 

" 0, I '11 give you a stick of candy, and some 
peppermints, and a sugar heart, and an orange, 
— if you are very good." 

" I know better." 

" Why, my son, what do you mean, to speak 
so to your mother ? " 

"I don't mean nothin', only I sha'n't get 
'em." 

''Do you think that your mother would tell a 
lie to you ? " 

" No, — H airiH lying' for you^ hut H ivould he 
lying for me; and I should catch a big lickin', 
if /did as you do." 

" Why, Johnny, what do you mean ? " 

" I told you once, I don't mean nothin', only, 
last time I went down town with you, you 



56 STREET THOUGHTS. 

promised to give me a piece of pie, and a slice of 
plum-cake, and a great apple, and twenty-four 
pea-nuts, and ever so many gum-drops, when I 
got home, if I would be good, and not play 
horse, and tip over the chairs, in that big house 
where we went ; and when I got home, you 
slapped me, and put me to bed, 'cause I give the 
kitty your bonnet to play with, — and I didn't 
git none on 'em. And I know you won't now, 
'cause I shall do something' that you '11 make 
some kind of a 'scuse of, to cheat me. But then 
't ain't lyings — 'cause I 'm a little boy, and 
you're a big woman. If ever I get big, 't won't 
be lying for me to tell wrong stories, — but 't is 
now." 

" Hush, hush, Johnny ! — you must n't talk so 
in the street ; for people will hear you, and 
think you are a very naughty boy, and won't 
love you." 

" I don't want 'em to. I don't care notliin' 
about nobody's loving me ; but when they say 
they '11 give me sticks of candy, and things, I 
want 'em to do it, and not cheat me, 'cause I 'm 
little and they 're big, and 't ain't lying for big 
folks to lie to little folks." 

" Johnny, if you say that again, I '11 put you to 
bed the very minute we get home, and you shall 
stay there till to-morrow morning." 

" There, — I told you so. I knew you 'd have 



CHEATING CHILDREN. 57 

dear ! — I wish 't wa'n't lying 
for little boys to lie ! " 

" Johnny, what did I tell you ? " — and here 
commenced a street scuffle ; the enraged mother 
wringing the arm of the boy, and dragging him 
along with stern force, — he resisting, kicking, 
and screaming stoutly. 

It was a sad scene. It lifted the curtain upon 
home mismanagement. It revealed a little soul, 
capable of a noble destiny, suffering under the 
dwarfing and deforming process of a false theory 
of domestic discipline. His bit of philosophy on 
the practical difference between untruthfulness 
in high and low places evidently cut to the 
quick, because it was edged with truth. 

When will fathers and mothers learn to apply 
the golden rule to the concerns of the nursery, 
and to train children for life, by making them 
feel that all the great laws of righteousness rest 
upon all alike — in their own sphere and meas- 
ure — there ? 



58 



XII. 

THE COLOR OF GENTLEMEN. 

" I 'VE a great mind not to sj^eak to you.'* 

" Why not ? " 

" Because I saw you in such company yes- 
terday." 

" You saw me in no company, yesterday, that 
was not good and reputable." 

'' I saw you walking, yesterday, in close and 
apparently interested and congenial intercourse, 
with a Miigger' as black as the darkest night, 
when the moon does n't shine because it can't 
push any shine through the clouds, and the street- 
lamps don't shine, out of politeness to the moon." 

" Granted. Yet your implied assertion, that 
you saw me in bad company, remains unproven. 
' Black ' is hardly synonymous with ' bad.' " 

'^I would n't have been seen in the streets in 
that condition." 

" I have seen you in worse." 

" Take care, Edward. What do you mean ? " 

" I mean, William, that I have many times met 



THE COLOR OF GENTLEMEN. 59 

you on Washington Street, walking arm in arm, 
well pleased, with both gentlemen and ladies, as 
they are popularly called, of vastly less intelli- 
gence and moral worth than the individual whom 
you are pleased to style ' a nigger,' and with 
whom you saw me conversing." 

" I don't care if he were an angel. J would n't 
be seen publicly disgracing myself by contact 
with him. If I must swallow such a black dose, 
I would keep it, as the doctors sometimes direct 
their medicines containing iodine to be kept, in 
some congenially dark corner." 

" Pray, William, where is the disgrace of being 
seen to treat a gentlemanly person who has a 
black skin as a gentleman ? " 

" Gentleman ! A ' nigger ' a gentleman ! I 
should think you had better emigrate to Liberia 
at once. I knew you were a rabid Republican, 
but I did n't know you had gone clean over to the 
Amalgamationists." 

" I beg pardon, William; but you have n't an- 
swered my question." 

" What question ? " 

" Why a gentlemanly negro is not as really a 
gentleman as a gentlemanly white person ? " 

" I tell you the idea is absurd." 

" Still you don't answer. Do you, from your 
ancient reminiscences as a schoolmaster, happen 
to remember Webster's definition of a gentle- 
man ? " 



60 STREET THOUGHTS. 

" I can't say that I do." 

"Let me refresh your memory : ' a man of 
education and good breeding, of any occupation,' 
— or something like that ; in short, a man who 
is reputable in character, and courteous in man- 
ners, as distinguished from the reverse. Now, 
where does such a definition necessarily exclude 
the negro ? Is he not a man ? And, being a 
man, may he not so culture himself as to come 
up most fully to the requirement of such a defi- 
nition ? " 

" He is n't a man." 

" I know that remarkable person who once un- 
rolled a mummy before a Boston audience, with 
some of his ' scientific ' friends, and, latterly, the 
Supreme Court, would like to make people be- 
lieve that ; yet you don't believe it, though you 
say it." 

" You can't prove that he is a man." 

" You used to teach Physiology, I presume. 
Let me remind you that the only essential physi- 
cal difference between yourself, and the person 
with whom you saw me walking yesterday, is, 
that there is a little more coloring-matter in the 
cells on the under side of his cuticle, than there 
is in the corresponding cells on the under side of 
your own. You are dark brown in complexion ; 
the granules of your under-skin are something 
more than amber-colored ; those of his are a dark 



THE COLOR OF GENTLEMEN. 61 

copper-color ; — that is all the difference between 
you. You are a ' white man,' and he is a ' ne- 
gro,' in consequence of it. But are you ready to 
assert that the mere physical difference of a 
degree or two in the depth of coloring-matter 
in these epidermal cells — all other component 
parts of the animal and mental and moral or- 
ganism remaining identical between the two — 
constitutes a difference as between manhood and 
beasthood ? " 

'^ Well, if a negro is a man, he is n't a gentle- 
man." 

" Not unless he behaves like one. If he does, 
why is he not? " 

" Society does n't recognize him as such." 

" Society does n't do a great many things it 
ought." 

" Society is my rule." 

" It is not mine, nor God's. Its rule is iron, 
and not golden." 

" Such as it is, we are bound to keep it." 

" By what authority ? " 

"That of necessity." 

" So that, in a society of pirates, you would be 
a pirate? " 

" No ; but in little matters like this, we must 
do as others do." 

'^ Suppose yourself in the negro's place, — 
would it be a ' little ' matter ? " 



62 6TKEET THOUGHTS. 

" You pester me with questions." 

"You annoy me with answers. The fact is, 
William, you have been untrue to yourself and 
your better nature in all that you have said. 
You know that a negro is a man, and may be a 
gentleman, and that when he is so he ought to 
be treated as such, just as well as I do. You 
know that society is mean, as well as wrong, in 
thus consenting to be unjust to the weak, out of 
courtesy to the strong. Of course, none of us 
advocate the superior desirableness of intimate 
association between black and white, as a gen- 
eral thing ; but we do urge, that when a black 
man has brain, and uses it, and cultures himself 
to a position equal, or superior, to our own, he 
ought to have the credit of it, and the courtesy 
that belongs to it, — and the man who is afraid 
to accord it to him, through fear of what society 
will say, is a pellucid poltroon. So say I ; so 
says your inner soul ! " 

And so said we, — as we alighted from the 
omnibus in which we had been an interested 
listener to the dialogue thus far. 



63 



XIII. 

THE ANNIVEESAHIES. 

" There ! that 's an Anniversary going round 
that corner ; don't you see him, — that great tall 
fellow, with a white neck and a black body ? " 

" What, — that one with an umbrella in one 
hand, and a valise in t' other, and that walks 
kind' as though he didn't know the way ? " 

" Yes, that 's him. You '11 always see 'em 
round, about the time the grass gets real green 
on the Common, as thick as soldiers to a train- 
ing. Don't you know they call this time o' year 
Anniversaries ? That's why." 

There 's a good deal of philosophy in this 
world, thought we, as we overheard this boyish 
colloquy, that comes about as near the truth as 
this juvenile specimen, and is quite as confidently 
held, and authoritatively promulged. There 's 
many a man ready to go to the stake — in a 
metaphorical point of view — for a dogma that 
has fewer and remoter relations to the truth as 
it is in Jesus, than the " Anniversaries " have to 



64 STREET THOUGHTS. 

the presence in our streets of an unusual per- 
centage of white cambric and black broadcloth. 
But what a difference there is between the whole 
business of " Anniversaries " now, and a genera- 
tion ago ! Well do we remember the eventful 
period when, after no little previous pondering 
on the part of the whole household, and a serious 
meditation upon the perils of the uncertain way, 
the old white horse, currycombed for the occasion 
with unwonted care, and the venerable chaise, 
fresh washed in the neighbor brook, were brought 
to the door, bright and early on Monday morn- 
ing, and our honored sire, with appropriate part- 
ing counsels, commenced that quiet family pace, 
which it was anticipated — wind, weather, and 
casualties permitting — would bring up at the 
Bromfield stables, somewhere among the hours 
of declining day. Suburban driving was com- 
paratively tranquil then, for the railroad that 
carried granite from the Quincy quarries to the 
Quincy wharf — pa7'vus pater maximariim famili- 
arum — was alone in its glory, and the scream 
of a locomotive was an acoustic phenomenon that 
prophecy had not foretold. Progress was slow, 
but sure, and the ministry of the State trotted 
gravely into the metropolis with dust on their 
coats, instead of, as now, being whisked and 
rumbled in with sparks in their eyes. It was 
their yearly visit. It cost something, and meant 



THE ANNIVERSARIES. 65 

something, and tvas something. If there were 
fewer assemblies, they made more of them ; and 
if the speaking was not quite so rousing, they 
took it in larger doses. Meetings, from invoca- 
tion to benediction, were then done by the job ; 
and a minister would as soon have thought of 
going out of his own church in sermon- time, as 
of omitting or curtailing anything that made a 
part of the regular programme of holy week. 
The idea of " dropping in " upon two or three 
simultaneous services, so as to get a bird's-eye 
view, say of one sermon, two addresses, three 
speeches, an abolition meeting, several old 
friends, and a few new books, with a little shop- 
ping for home thrown in, all in the compass 
of one forenoon's time, would have been some- 
what confusing, and indeed quite shocking, to 
our fathers. They walked about the streets 
with a ponderous gravity, which has passed away 
from these tumultuous and telegraphic times. 
They gallantly waited upon the ladies, their 
hostesses, to and from church, as if they were 
here on a family visit, and had no extraneous 
claims upon their attention. At a proper time, 
and when there was no service in progress, they 
went into Samuel T. Armstrong's, or Crocker and 
Brewster's, — as it was in old Scott's Bible times, 
— and carefully considered the ten or a dozen 
new books of the last twelvemonth ; paid good 

6* 



6G strep:t thoughts. 

round prices for such as they liked, and felt able 
to buy ; settled for the Panoplist for the year ; 
called round ujDon Father Willis, and squared 
up for the Boston Recorder and Youtli's Com- 
panion ; possibly bought somewhere a small 
package of something useful for wife and chil- 
dren at home ; and, the duties of the week 
having been conscientiously performed, duly 
bade courteous farewell to their city entertainers, 
paid their stable bills in Bromfield Street, and 
were off in good season on Friday morning for 
home, and the toil of another year. Safely back, 
the incidents of the journey furnished material 
for many an hour's chat, and its pleasant mem- 
ories cast a savor of sunshine over following 
months. 

All which things are managed differently now. 
The prevalent unrest has dislocated the old quiet 
order ; and residents and visitors, speakers and 
hearers, and lookers-on, all partake of the high- 
pressure impulses of the times, — what Juvenal 
calls tliQ fu7rium et opes, strepitmnque RomcB. 



67 



XIV. 

SENSIBLE SUITS. 

" George, what makes you try to look so 
much like a minister ? " 

" How do you mean ? " 

" I mean in your dress. You always wear a 
black dress-coat, and black vest and pants, and 
often a neck- tie that is almost white." 

" Yes, — I think it is becoming ; and, besides, 
it is of some consequence to me, in my business, 
to have men think I 'm able to dress well." 

" I don't call that dressing well." 

" It 's dressing as ' our first men ' dress." 

" A man may do a great many things as ' our 
first men ' do them, and make a big fool of 
himself for his pains. I go in for doing what 
is really sensible, without regard to the habits of 
men, first or second, great or small." 

" Why is n't it ' sensible ' to wear a black 
suit ? " 

" In the first place, because it costs the most 
and comes to the least, in the amount of the real 



68 STREET THOUGHTS. 

wear and tear wliicli it will bear, of any descrip- 
tion of clothing which men ordinarily use. It is 
almost always tender and half rotten, so that a 
slight strain or rub, which a substantial cloth of 
another color would n't mind in the least, rends 
and ruins it. In the second place, it is wholly 
unsuitable to all business purposes. Every float- 
ing speck of dirt sails for it, as steel goes to mag- 
net ; every thread of lint is sure to find it ; the 
ordinary smut of the shop and street gives it a 
second-hand and seedy look, even when compara- 
tively new ; you can't lay your hand, of a sudden, 
to lift or move anything, without sacrificing your 
coat, or stopping to take it off ; and, in general, 
and on the whole, it is every way as unsuitable 
to all the purposes of a business man, as the 
tight, full-dress, and elaborately stuffed uniform 
of a dandy volunteer city company would be to 
the rough and tumble of the actual service of 
a campaign." 

" Well, would you have me look like an 
expressman ? " 

" I 've seen good-looking expressmen, — who 
would compare favorably with your comely and 
gentlemanly self, in their appearance on the 
street." 

'' Yes, — doubtless ; but that does n't precisely 
answer my question." 

" I will answer it, then. I hold that every 



SENSIBLE SUITS. 69 

sensible man will dress according to liis position 
and its claims upon him. I like to see a minis- 
ter wear a black suit — though I 'm not so par- 
ticular about the white neckcloth as some — in 
the pulpit, and when engaged in strictly pro- 
fessional service ; but it seems to me as perfectly 
ridiculous for ministers, because they are such, 
to travel, and rough it on their farms, or about 
their parishes, in pulpit rig, as for a bride 
to wear her wedding dress and white bonnet 
through all the sparks and dust of her wedding 
journey. I respect a clergyman in gray clothes, 
when he is where gray clothes are more suitable, 
economical, and every way convenient and be- 
coming, than any other. And I apply the same 
law, for substance, to all men. As a business 
man, I would have you dress appropriately, in 
colors ; and when you temporarily abdicate the 
business man, and assume your position as a 
private gentleman, I am perfectly willing you 
should look as ministerial as you please." 
" I don't know but you are right." 
" You '11 find, when you go abroad, that our 
rage (thank Heaven, it is passing away) for 
black coats upon all occasions, is a distinctively 
American folly. No Englishman of sense, from 
the Duke of Devonshire to the pettiest employe, 
thinks of such a thing as a black coat, except 
when in full dress. At all other times, some 



70 STREET THOUGHTS. 

gray and comfortable and work-suiting garb 
meets at once his necessities, and ministers to 
his comfort. Try it, I say, and see if you don't 
like it." 

Words of sense, in our judgment, which, if 
generally heeded, would save many a poor man 
many a dollar, — ministering, at the same time, 
to his comfort and sense of respectability, while 
in a costume appropriate to his calling. 



71 



XV. 

THE TYRANNY OF STRENGTH OVER WEAKNESS. 

It was early morning in Market Square. Coun- 
try wagons, laden with produce, were pouring in 
to dispose of their freight inside and outside the 
market, as occasion should serve. And those 
migratory dealers who buy to sell again were 
there, making the best bargains that they could 
with those whose carts contained the products of 
the soil in their " original packages." All was 
bustle and business. 

One of this last class, — an old man, in a garb 
whose neatness bespoke his carefulness as truly 
as its coarseness declared his extreme poverty, 
with a face of simple honesty, itself a sufficient 
certificate that his low estate was not the result 
of vice, but of misfortune, — with a venerable 
horse, and a wagon whose appointments were of 
the humblest description, drove up, and, meekly 
bestowing his unpretending equipage in the most 
out-of-the-way corner, commenced his morning 
purchases, — the capital upon which he was to 



72 STEEET THOUGHTS. 

trade, from street to street and house to house, 
during the day, slowly earning the pittance that 
must keep his feeble wife and their invalid son in 
bread. 

While he was thus employed, one of those 
huge four-horse teams, which, with immensely 
projecting hubs and a general give-me-the-whole- 
street-and-nothing-less air, make themselves a fre- 
quent nuisance, as they recklessly truck heavy 
goods through our narrow thoroughfares, came 
round the corner in the lee of which the poor 
man's wagon was standing, and, with cracking 
whip and clattering hoofs and rumbling wheels 
and vociferating driver, turned short down the 
Square. The racket which it made attracted the 
old man's attention, and aroused him to the dan- 
ger which threatened his vehicle, in case the 
strong chose to endanger the weak. The near 
wheel of his wagon already touched the curb- 
stone, and he could get no farther out of the way 
if he tried. There was room enough for a half- 
dozen carts to pass on the other side, and there- 
fore there could not be the slightest reason, nor 
the least legal or illegal excuse, for any collision. 
And yet the old man was alarmed, because he 
knew his wagon looked as if it belonged to a 
poor man, and he had, more than once, had sad 
experience, even in this land of equal rights and 
loud-voiced democracy, that it makes a great deal 



THE TYRANNY OF STRENGTH OVER WEAKNESS. 73 

of difference as to the reception of our personal 
rights, whether we look as if ive were able to 
enforce them or not. Therefore, especially as he 
saw that (to make a straighter ciit to the next 
corner) the huge vehicle was turning so as, at 
best, to clear his wheels by but a hair's breadth, 
the old man ran with sudden trepidation toward 
his horse. As he drew near, he saw that his 
doom was sealed, and he shouted to the driver of 
the great load to stop, before he crushed him. 
But, in the rattle and rumble of the big wheels 
on the pavement, his voice was, for a time, un- 
heard. The great wagon thundered on, and, as it 
came abreast of the little one, its projecting hubs 
caught its slight wheels and crashed them as if 
they had been made of pipe-stems. Just then, 
the poor old man shouted so loud, in his agoniz- 
ing thought of the effect of the catastrophe upon 
his little savings for the winter that is coming, 
that the great, burly driver condescended to hear, 
and to pull up his team and lean over to ask, with 
an oath, what he wanted. 

" Why need you run into me ? Don't you see 
the street is wide enough the other side, and I 'm 
as close as I can be to the sidewalk ? " 

" Who" (still with an oath) '' are you ? " 

" It don't make any difference who I am. You 
have no right to run me down in this way? " 

''Help yourself !^^ 



74 STREET THOUGHTS. 

" You ought to be prosecuted ; at least, you 
ought to pay me what it -will cost to get my wagon 
mended. My bread, and that of my wife and 
children, depends upon it. Do help me, wonH 
you ? " 

" Your wife and children must be good-look- 
in' ! You prosecute — you ^d better prosecute — 
you ^d look pretty prosecuting, you would ! It 's 
good enough for you ! You 've no business to be 
putting your old rattletraps in people's way ! 
You 'd better prosecute ! 1 advise you to prose- 
cute, I do ! " And, with sneering face and a fresh 
volley of oaths, the brutal scoundrel whipped up 
his long team and rattled away. 

The poor old man sadly surveyed the wreck, 
and, as he remembered that it must be mended, 
or he could not pursue his business, and if he 
could not pursue his business now, during the 
warm months, he and his would suffer by and by, 
his first impulse — smarting under a sense of 
cruel wrong — was to get a policeman, and try to 
obtain legal redress ; but his next thought was of 
a former experience, where such an effort had 
only ended in his losing more in time and money, 
twice over, than he gained from the law. And 
so — countermanding his orders for the vegeta- 
bles, on the sale of which he had hoped, by sun- 
down, to make a dollar or two, to add to his little 
pile for the long and cold winter, when nearly all 



THE TYRANNY OF STRENGTH OVER WEAKNESS. 75 

is spending, and there is little earning — he 
dragged the mutilated remains of his wagon to 
the shop of a wheelwright, to make the best bar- 
gain that he could for the repair of the damage. 

We pity the subjects of Austrian tyranny. 
But there is, sometimes, tyranny in our own 
streets, under the very shadow of our sanctua- 
ries and halls of justice, which cuts to the heart 
as keenly as anything that is wrought by the 
minions of oppression over sea! 



76 



XVI. 

SOUND ADVICE. 

'' I DID n't see you last night at the sewing- 
circle," said one young man to another, as they 
joined each other, and walked before us down 
the narrow sidewalk of Water Street. 

" No ; I — I was n't there ; I — I could n't 
go, very well." 

" I 'm sorry. We had a very pleasant time, 
and a profitable one, too, for sbme remarks were 
made by Rev. Dr. , which were very in- 
structive. AVere you sick ? " 

" No ; I was engaged. The fact is, — I may as 
well tell you first as last, — I was at the dancing- 
school, where I 've just commenced going." 

" Is it possible ? You going to the dancing- 
school ; why, yoii joined the Church less than 
two years ago ! " 

" I know it ; but a great many church-mem- 
bers, who are older than I am, go to the dancing- 
school, or dance, (which argues previous attend- 
ance,) and I don't know why I should n't have 



SOUND ADVICE. 77 

a good time as well as tliey ! Does n't the hymn 
say, ' Religion never was designed to make our 
pleasures less' ? " 

" And does n't the Bible say, ' Love not the 
world, neither the things of the world, for if any 
man love the world, the love of the Father is not 
in him ' ? And does n't it speak of such people 
as many who frequent the dancing-school, as 
' lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God ' ? " 

" Well, any way, Rev. Dr. 's daughters 

go, and he would n't let them go, if it were not 
right. Besides, I 'm sick and tired of long faces ; 
and then I feel that 1 owe it to myself to make 
the most I can of my person. It makes great 
difference in one's success, whether he 's graceful 
or awkward in his bodily movements." 

"Don't you ' owe it to yourself to make the 
best use you can of your mind and heart, as well 
as your ' person,' and does n't it make a still 
greater ^ difference in one's success,' whether he 's 
intelligent, and conscientious, and honest, and 
religious, or not ? " 

" Can't a man be all these, and dance ? " 

" Doubtless many men might, but I doubt if 
you and I shall be likely to. Some men are 
born in a sphere where dancing is as common as 
walking, and nothing more is thought of it, one 
way or another ; and God will judge them by 
whatever standard may be right for them. But 



78 STREET THOUGHTS. 

you and I were poor boys, born where dancing 
was a thing unknown, — except among the rowdy 
portion of society. We never were brought up 
to it. We have never moved in circles where we 
have felt the want of it, and I doubt if we are 
likely to. We work hard, and need all our spare 
time, and funds, for other and better uses. And 
for us, it seems to me that to learn to dance — even 
if nobody suspected any moral evil in connection 
with it — would be as absurd as for us to spend 
an entire year's income in buying a diamond 
shirt-pin, which either of us would be a fool to 
wear, if we picked it up in the street." 

" I should think you would study for the min- 
istry ! " 

" Would to God I could ; but don't sneer 
at me that way, Joseph. You know that we 
have always been good friends, and that I feel 
the deepest interest in your welfare, here and 
hereafter. And I must warn you of the danger 
of your present course. You don't feel satisfied 
about it, or you would n't have hung fire so in 
telling me of it. Take my advice, and don't go. 
It will fill your mind -v^ith all manner of needless 
nonsense. It will tend to bring you into contact 
with empty heads and doubtful hearts. It Avill 
not add one solid blessing to you ; while, by its 
great danger of alienating your affections from 
the Church and from serious things, it will, I 



SOUND ADVICE. 79 

fear, work your gradual ruin. Don't go any 
more, now, Joseph, I beg of you ! " 

"Amen and amen! " said we, passing by, — 
apologizing for our intrusion upon their converse 
by a word expressive of our interest in what we 
could not but overhear, and of our cordial con- 
currence in the sensible and pious advice which 
had been given. 



80 



XVII. 

THE POOR WOMAN. 

It was almost dark. The sunlight still streaked 
the west, but the streets were dim, save where 
the lamp-lighters had done their work. A feeble 
step went tottering by the open window where 
we sat ; and, as the poor woman whose slight 
frame it propelled, glanced around as she passed, 
we were almost startled by the pale and pain- 
stricken aspect of a face whose lineaments still 
retained the faded traces of uncommon sweetness 
and intelligence. Yielding to a sudden impulse, 
we passed out, and followed her, at respectful dis- 
tance, toward her humble home, — a mean and 
dilapidated old wooden building, standing at the 
terminus of a narrow lane which branches off 
from one of our principal streets at the West End. 
Waiting until a few moments after she had en- 
tered and closed the door behind her, we rapped. 
She peered out cautiously, as if dreading some 
unpleasant visitor, and, with a face even more 
striking than when we first caught a glimpse of 



THE POOR WOMAN. 81 

it, (now that her not very comely bonnet was re- 
moved,) and with a timid and long-suffering 
tone, she said, " Who is there ?" 

" A friend," was our reply. The door opened 
suddenly, as she tried to scan our face by the 
commingling of the little light yet left in heaven 
and the dim flare of the poor oil-lamp, which 
hung on an iron bracket projecting above her 
windows. 

" I don't know you," at last said she, as she 
finished her scrutiny, and drew the door again 
toward her, as if from an instinct of self-defence, 
— " I don't know you, — what is it that you 
wish ? I am poor and alone, and I have no 
friends." 

^' I am your friend." 

" I never saw you before." 

" You may never see me again ; but I am your 
friend for all that." 

" For what reason ? " 

" For the reason that our Saviour gave, when 
he said, ' As ye would that men should do to you, 
do ye also to them likewise.' If I were in your 
place, and you in mine, I should want you to be 
my friend." 

" Come in," said she, quickly thrusting the 
door open wide ; " you talk like a Christian, and 
Christian foot has never before crossed this thresh- 
old since this poor old house has sheltered me. 



82 STREET THOUGHTS. 

Come in, — I am afraid of no man with the lan- 
guage of the Saviour on his lips." 

We entered, and glanced around upon a clean- 
swept room, bare of all furniture, except a chest 
of drawers, which looked as if it might once have 
occupied an honorable place in some grand man- 
sion, and was now mourning its mistress's de- 
cline, a rocking-chair with one fractured arm, a 
pine table, with two or three coarse earthen 
dishes, a tallow candle dimly burning, and a bed 
made up neatly in the corner, on the floor, with 
a few books on the shelf, and a few cooking uten- 
sils on the hearth. 

Pushing us the rocking-chair, and motioning 
us to be seated therein, she leaned against the 
bureau, and with simple dignity said, "I am 
glad to see you, for you look like an honest man, 
and speak like a Christian. I am very poor, as 
you see. I was not always so, as you may infer. 
But that matters not. Tell me wherefore you 
are come, — for I cannot believe that you intend 
to do me any harm." Then, without giving us 
time to reply, she added, — as if what she had 
said needed apology, — " The truth is, I have one 
hard creditor, who has no mercy, and I feared it 
might be somebody come from him, to trouble me 
further." 

" I said I was your friend. I am so much so, 
though I never saw you before, as to beg you to 



THE POOR WOMAN. 83 

make me — so far as yovi may deem proper — a 
confidant of that distress which writes itself upon 
your very face, as well as upon your dwelling. 
I ask this, not out of vulgar curiosity, but be- 
cause I have a sincere desire to give any proper 
aid that may be in my power." 

The poor woman turned her wan face a mo- 
ment to the wall, and her slight frame quivered 
with emotion, and the tears were streaming down 
her cheeks when she looked us again in the face, 
and passionately burst forth : " Two sad, sad 
years have I gone out and in over that threshold, 
in the burning heat of summer, and the frosty 
horror of winter, — six church-bells sounding in 
my ears every Sabbath of the time, — and never 
heard such a word before from any fellow-crea- 
ture. I did believe I should die here alone, — 
that my landlord would be left to sell my bones 
to the college, for the surgeons, to make out my 
arrears of rent, and that no human being would 
see me laid in a decent grave. Thank God, at 
last I hear a voice that has neither malice, nor 
meanness, nor avarice, nor scorn, nor tempta- 
tion, in its tones." 

As the poor woman recovered herself from this 
burst of feeling, we placed her in the rocking- 
chair, where it. was obvious that she had need 
enough to rest, and, standing by her side, lis- 
tened to her tale, — an old, old story, and yet one 



84 STREET THOUGHTS. 

that is ever new. Youth, health, wealth, beauty, 
a husband, happy children, a dear, dear home, — 
all had been hers ; all had been swept away by 
one dark Providence after another, until all were 
gone, — and here she was, a solitary sufferer, 
eking out life by the toil of her feeble fingers, 
with no single friend to comfort her, with deed 
or word. 

" 0, Sir," said she, " sometimes I have almost 
sinfully wanted to curse Grod and die, when I 
have looked out of my window upon the dwell- 
ings of wealth adjacent, and seen wasted there 
what would have kept me in luxury (for me) for 
days, and almost weeks. I know it is all right, 
— better than I deserve, — yet it would have 
been pleasant to have seemed to belong to the 
same race with them." 

We sought to speak a few words of appropriate 
counsel, and to prepare the way for some deeds 
of appropriate kindness ; and we had the joy to 
see the pale and pain-smitten face beam with un- 
wonted happiness, as we went away, with a prom- 
ise of speedy return. 

If our space were not too full to write more, 
our heart was too full then to utter more, as we 
thought, " Who made us to differ ? " 



85 



XVIII. 

BEIGHTON ON SUNDAY, P. M. 

" I DID n't see you at church, yesterday after- 
noon." 

" No. I went to Brighton." 

" To church ? " 

" Well — not exactly. The fact was, — it 
being pleasant, and having been shut up all the 
week, and not having had a ride for a long time, 

— I thought I would take Mrs. and the 

children out, for once, and ' do as the world 
does.' " 

" Does the world ' go to Brighton on Sunday 
afternoon ? " 

" Why, yes ; pretty much everybody, that is 
anybody, calculates to be seen on the Brighton 
road occasionally, after morning church." 

" ' Morning church ' is an indispensable pre- 
liminary, then, to such an appearance ? How is 
it about evening- service ? Is that laid on top of 
the Brighton which covers the church A. M., 
a la Sandwich ? " 

8 



86 STREET THOUGHTS. 

" Well, you 're both inquisitive and funny, it 
strikes me. I suppose you design to intimate, in 
a gentle way, that I'd better have gone to 
church in the afternoon myself, as you and your 
worthy spouse undoubtedly did. But the fact 
is, I think we need amusement as well as in- 
struction ; and, after having heard a good solid 
sermon in the morning, and paid my respects to 
the cause of good morals and public decency, by 
being seen at church, I — " 

" Paid your respects to the cause of bad morals 
and public w^-decency, by 'being seen' on the 
Brighton road, with the jockeys, in the afternoon. 
Hah ? " 

" You 're polite, friend." 

" No, I ain't polite ; I'm only truthful. If I 
meant to be polite, I should go into the theory 
of amusement, after the manner of Paley on 
worlds and watches, and lay down the great 
principle that riding to Brighton on Sunday 
afternoons is a great social want ; that God prov- 
identially created horses, and endowed man to 
make buggies and family carryalls, and caused 
the city of Boston and the town of Brighton to 
be situated and connected as at present, to the 
end that that great social want might be sup- 
plied ; that whatever evil has followed, or, in 
any case, has been supposed to follow, this 
species of recreation, is owing to the coldness of 



BRIGHTON ON SUNDAY, P. M. 87 

the Church toward the subject, and to the crim- 
inal habit into which the clergy and their coad- 
jutors have fallen, of frequenting church, instead 
of the Cattle Fair Hotel, on Sunday, P. M. ; and 
that, in doing your part to uphold and promote 
proper views on this great subject, you are a 
philanthropist of the deepest dye. This is what 
I should say, if I went in for being polite. But 
merely intending to speak the truth, I do beg 
leave to remark, in your hearing, that I think 
you would have been setting a better example, 
and doing, as well as getting, more good, if you 
had gone to church, and left Brighton to the 
rowdies who divide that unfortunate precinct 
with the butchers." 

" Well, you 've made a pretty long speech, 
any way." 

" I '11 hear you, now." 

" I don't know as 1 have anything very par- 
ticular to add, though — " 

The near rumble of an omnibus drowned the 
rest of the reply, and when it had subsided, we 
found ourselves out of ear-shot of the pair of 
talkers. 

But we thought this fragment was, on the 
whole, too good to be lost, and so we pulled out 
our tablets, and jotted it down, while fresh. 



90 STREET THOUGHTS. 

ter, to keep my hands warm ; I wear them when 
I dig in the garden, to protect mj skin from the 
attrition of gravel and the annoyances of thorns 
and briers ; I wear them, sometimes, when fish- 
ing, to save my fingers from the abrasion of a 
deep-sea cod-line ; and, in general, I wear them 
whenever they are of any real use ; never at any 
other time, or for any other reason." 

" But is n't it of ' use ' to keep your hands 
from getting the nut-brown tinge of the mere 
swain, notifying all beholders that he belongs to 
the pig and chicken class ? " 

" Tastes differ. The class of pigs and chickens 
does n't repel me so much as the class of animals 
with larger legs and longer ears, whose biped 
representatives and friends are much exercised to 
conceal their hands from public gaze. / am not 
afraid to show mine, — brawny and brown, it 
may be, but good for work, and not bad for all 
honest uses." 

" I see you will never be a fashionable man. 
You 've imbibed absurd notions from some low 
source. You '11 find it will damage you with the 
better classes. I advise you to give it up — " 

" And spend a hundred dollars a year, or so, 
for gloves ? Nay, friend, I prefer to invest it in 
books. And when you get so that you can't be 
seen in the street alongside of my brown hands, 
the loss will be mine, and I will try to bear it — 
in the society of my library — as I may." 



91 



XX. 

OUR ]\rETHUSELAHS. 

"He's a fool ! he's a mere chicken! He's 
too young to be married yet, this five years ! 
What is getting into all the boys and girls ? 
When I was a boy, I should as soon have thought 
of stealing, as of getting married." 

" I fancy there 's many a boy, now-a-days, that 
thinks of stealing as soon as he has got married, 
and effected the grand discovery that kisses 
won't make the pot boil, nor pay the butcher, 
nor baker, nor candlestick-maker." 

Thus communed two gentlemen of the old 
school, in the vestibule of the Post-Office, as we 
passed them to look at our box. On our way 
out, we met a lad, whose smooth chin, and the 
general youthfulness of whose comely aspect, 
made us think "there's a pretty boy," when, 
to our dismay, somebody by our side loudly 
accosted him with, " Well, old fellow, how 's your 
wife ? " 

Said dismay was deepened by the answer, — 



92 STREET THOUGHTS. 

" Pretty well, thankie ; but the baby has the 
measles, and our oldest the mumps, while No. 
Two fell down, the other day, and broke his 
crown, and has been very dumpish ever since ! " 

We learned afterward, by inquiry of a friend 
who knows this phenomenon, that his language 
was literally true, and that his " family " at the 
present time consists of five members, to wit : 
himself, aged twenty ; his wife, aged nineteen ; 
and three children, aged two years and ten 
months, one year and four months, and three 
months, respectively ! His salary (he is a retail 
dry-goods clerk) is supposed to be about five 
hundred dollars ! 

People call this a fast age. It appears to us it 
^might be truthfully called a young age. Cer- 
tainly, youth largely enters into it. 

Furthermore, a small boy, now, knows quite 
as much as his father, and incomparably more 
than his grandfather ; while his great-grand- 
father, if he happen to survive, is a mere fool 
to him. 

If Methuselah were now alive, it would be 
amusing, if it were not sad, to think how he 
would fare. He would date back to just about 
A. D. 890, — the era of the founding of Oxford, — 
about the time when Alfred was in his glory in 
England, when Arpad was founding Hungary, 
and Arnold of Germany was taking Rome. The 



OUR METHUSELAHS. 93 

old gentleman would doubtless remember a thing 
or two ; but it would be hardly safe for him to 
speak of it, or some youngster, in his bib and 
Bancroft, would correct his dates, or contradict 
his facts, and set him down as an " old fogy " ! 
Old Doctor Beecher and Doctor Jenks would have 
a good time with him ; and he might possibly be 
asked to sit on the platform, and pronounce the 
benediction for some society, in Anniversary 
Week ; but he would be lucky to get home with 
his eyes unblinded with street smoke, his gar- 
ments undefiled with street spittle, and his bones 
unbroken in some street scuffle. 



94 



XXI. 

AMBITIOUS ARCHITECTURE. 

" Building ? Yes, it appears to me there 's 
a perfect mania for building and re-bnilding. 
Wliy, to say nothing of new streets in the Back 
Bay, where the tide has hardly done flowing be- 
fore the pile-drivers begin thumping for a foun- 
dation, there are any quantity of sedate old lots, 
down town, which are taking off their coats, and 
turning up their sleeves, preparatory to a knock- 
down and drag-out, and a new iron front, and 
accordingiies to match." 

" Who 're going to occupy all the great new 
stores ? It really looks as if goods enough could 
be sold in them to supply five times the legiti- 
mate constituency of Boston ! " 

" It might be more pertinent to inquire who 
is going to pay the rent on them, and do a liv- 
ing business beside. In my humble judgment, 
some of those stupendous stores will be the ruin 
of more than one adventurous, and probably 
also well-meaning and hard-working, but short- 
sighted individual." 



AMBITIOUS ARCHITECTURE. 95 

*^ Why ? They have ^ all the conveniences,' 
and certainly much more business can be done 
in them than in the old, dingy, low-in-the-walls 
sales-rooms which they replace." 

" Doubtless ; but if you double the rent, you 
must at least double the business, to pay, not 
merely that item added, but the clerk-hire, and 
the hundred other added items, which come in 
the train of the grand establishment. To do this, 
in the existing competition in the trade, you 
must take all the customers you can get, without 
scrutinizing too closely their moral characters ; 
you must sell low, and sell long, and after you 
have waited a big while for a little money, you 
must, very often, charge the amount to profit and 
loss, (especially loss,) through the deficit of dis- 
tant buyers, who, likely enough, never meant to 
pay, even when they were drinking your cham- 
pagne, and eating your turtle-soup, preparatory 
to running up their swindle." 

" And yet one would think a fine store would 
be apt to bring fine customers." 

'^ Some customers are shrewd enough to know 
that a good chest of tea, or an A No. 1 bale of 
goods, bought in an old warehouse with a dingy 
front, and a low rent, is quite as good as, and is 
apt to cost somewhat less than, the same quality 
of article, bought where, in addition to costs of 
importation, and the regular profit of trade, a 



96 STREET THOUGHTS. 

considerable percentage must be added for extra 
rent, salary, and show expenses. Some old heads 
are mighty shy about running up much of a bill 
in these ' palatial' wareliouses. It just occurs to 
them that all that magnificence has to be paid 
for, and that they are as likely to be levied upon 
as any other persons." 

" You would n't advocate mean stores, would 
you?" 

" No, I don't advocate anything that is mean ; 
and that is the reason why I don't advocate that 
excessive preponderance of show over substance 
which is a prominent feature in a great many of 
the building operations at present going on around 
us. If there is anything meaner than for a man 
to take a great store and stock it with goods, and 
take a great house and fill it with flummery, and 
then fail, at the end of a few months, and cheat 
everybody concerned out of ninety-three per 
cent of their money, — all sunk in the maelstrom 
of extravagance in rents and general manage- 
ment, at the store and at the house, — I don't 
happen to think of it at this moment." 

It ''just occurred" to us, as we passed out of 
ear-shot of this pair of talkers, — the latter of 
whom was waxing somewhat warmer than the ther- 
mometer (although over ninety degrees) would 
really warrant, — that the speaker might have 
had some personal experience, not of the most 



AMBITIOUS ARCHITECTURE. 97 

agreeable sort, to give a little acidity to his gen- 
eral views on the subject under discussion ; and 
yet we could n't help feeling that essential truth 
was at the bottom of what he said. 

There is here and there a store, and oftener 
than here and there a house, now completing, or 
recently completed, in Boston, which belongs to 
the " flummery " order of architecture, and which 
invites the occupancy of some fool whose money 
and him it will do its speedy best to part. Stores 
are a little out of our line, and we would not 
speak too confidently with regard to them ; but 
we assuredly know that there is a large number 
of houses whose tenants (by purchase or rent) 
will pay a yearly rate of well-nigh double the sum 
which they ought to pay for all the real accom- 
modation which their domicile affords, — the 
balance going toward leaky bay-windows, showy 
cornices, elaborate knicknackery in general, with 
the draperies, tapestries, e^ id omne g-enus, which 
supplement them, and which drain a man of 
money, as a hungry horseleech sucks dry the 
vein upon which he fastens. 

Sensible houses are the great need, just now, 
ill Boston. Houses that are not "all up and 
down " ; that have gas and water conveniences ; 
that have roomy rooms and well-ventilating chim- 
neys ; that are not so elaborate in gingerbread 
architecture as almost to compel lavish expendi- 

9 



98 STREET THOUGHTS. 

ture in internal furnishing to keep up the fitness 
of things ; and, above all, that can be rented for 
from $350 to $550 per annum. He who would 
build a hundred such houses would be a great 
public benefactor, and would by no means throw 
away his money. 



99 



XXII. 

SUCH WEATHER ! 

"0, SUCH weather! — such iveather ! How 
can you look so cheerful hi such weather, — in 
mud, and drizzle, and east wind, and fog, and 
gales, and rain, and snow, all mixed up to- 
gether ? " 

" Well, indeed, you have made a mournful 
catalogue, and I don't know as you have insert- 
ed anything either that Nature has n't put in, 
within the week. But don't look so long-faced 
about it ; you don't depend for your happiness 
upon the weather, do you ? " 

"Yes, I do, — very much. When the sun 
shines, I shine ; when it rains, I mope ; and 
when it does — as it has the last week — every- 
thing that is damp, and dumpish, and disagree- 
able, I am in a perpetual fret, and nothing suits 
me." 

" I incline to think, my dear madam, that you 
are a little too frank in your avowals, and, 
unlike most visitors to the confessional, you have 
made it rather worse than it is, with you." 



100 STREET THOUGHT^. 

" Not a bit, —not a bit. I do assure you, I 
feel |)ositively ugly, every ' equinoctial ' ; and 
every time it rains a storm instead of a shower, 
I feel as if I had n't a friend on earth. If I 
managed matters, I would have sunshine all the 
time." 

" But how about vegetation, which would be 
apt to parch under such a regimen ? " 

" Well, I 'd have it rain always in the night." 

" Then how about those nights when you wish 
to be out ? " 

" I would n't have it rain on those nights." 

" Somebody wants to be out every night. 
And then, too, as the earth sometimes needs a 
rather more thorough soaking than ten or twelve 
hours would give it, how would you have that 
managed ? " 

" 0, I don't care if other people do get wet, 
once in a while ; and I don't know about the 
earth. All I know is, if I had my way, it never 
should rain when I didn't want it to." 

" Pardon me the impertinence of the sugges- 
tion, — but is there not just the least spice of 
what the divines call ' selfishness ' in your posi- 
tion, thus expressed ? " 

" Just the least spice," thought we, as we 
passed beyond ear-shot of the pair, who were 
breasting the northeaster with commendable 
perseverance ; and we wondered how the inhab- 



SUCH WEATHER ! 101 

itants of the earth would stand affected , if this 
ladj-complainer could take the direction of the 
weather for just one month. Her creed of man- 
agement would be short and explicit ; she would 
" suit herself." When she wanted to drive out, 
it would be pleasant. If she happened to fancy 
a longer excursion than usual, the sun might 
be kept above the horizoi?. an extra hour or so, 
and the whole race of almanac-makers would be 
paralyzed with astonishment. When she wanted 
a breeze to blow into her open window, it would 
come from the most unexpected quarter for 
that purpose, without reference to sailors' rights. 
The crops would have a hard time of it, and the 
farmers would cut a thin supply of grass. 

Wouldn't there be a commotion among the 
general public ! Would n't there be a great 
convention called to remonstrate on the mon- 
strous injustice of having the interests of the 
whole world pivoted upon the fancy of a single 
individual, and managed for the imaginary bene- 
fit of one, rather than the real good of all ? And 
would n't the opinion become general at last, — 
herself included, — that the matter would be 
better in the old hands, — managed by Infinite 
Wisdom for the common benefit, — mud, mist, 
and drizzle included ? 



9# 



102 



XXIII. 

WHAT ELSE AEE Y0U1 

'^ Comment vous portez-vous, Mademoiselle? 
The thirty-third pleasant morning in succession 
I 've seen you on Washington Street ; throwing 
out rainy days and Sundays, when there is n't any- 
body round. Are n't i/ou a street-yarn-spinner ? " 
said a bright-faced and jauntily-dressed miss, be- 
fore us, to a somewhat plainer and a good deal 
more time-and-weather-worn-looking female, who 
met her on the sidewalk. 

" To be sure I am," w^as the reply ; " and why 
not ? What else are you ? " 

We did not linger to catch any further sylla- 
bles ; but that last sentence struck us as conveying 
a good deal more of truth, in its curt interroga- 
tion, than was likely to be apprehended by the 
party addressed, or than was, in all probability, 
intended by the speaker. It seemed to us that 
there are a good many females in Boston — very 
reputable and admirable as the world goes — who 
miglit be puzzled to make an honest reply to a 



WHAT ELSE ARE YOU? 103 

similar question, without damaging conscience 
by a suppression of the truth, or self-respect by 
its utterance. 

" What else are you ? " You are an out-door 
person. You can't get through the day without 
promenading Washington Street, to see and be 
seen ; to catch an idea of the latest fashions, by 
observing what peoj)le, in general, have on; to 
exchange street nods with certain " perfect loves " 
of gentlemen, with whom you have mainly a 
sidewalk acquaintance ; and you are '' miserably 
moped," when it comes evening, if you can't go 
somewhere, with somebody, to see something. In 
short, your existence is especially — one would 
almost judge only — valuable to you for the 
points of contact which it has with the outer 
world. You are a spinner of street yarn. Now, 
luhat else are you ? 

Are you a student of anything ? Have you 
the first clear idea of the wonderful body and 
more wonderful mind which God has given you, 
— of their capabilities, dangers, destiny ? Do 
you know the place where the road to an insane 
retreat, or an early grave, forks from the path to 
health and long life and happiness? Are you 
conscious of the immeasurable wealth which 
other minds have stored for you in volumes 
heaped and fragrant with wisdom ? Are you 
aware that Prescott's Histories are, in reality, 



104 STREET THOUGHTS. 

more fascinating than Ballon'* s Pictorial? and 
that the Bible is, as a matter of fact, more " in- 
teresting" than the last new novel ? Above all, 
have you any acquaintance with the sublime fact, 
that daily obedience to daily duty is the recipe 
for daily comfort, — that the sweetest flowers of 
earthly joy grow on the prickly and uncouth and 
bitter cactus-branches of disagreeable, yet di- 
vinely appointed drudgeries ? 

You know that Mr. So-and-so " keeps " on such 

a corner. You know where Madame W 's 

millinery chambers are. You know where that 
"elegant" clerk, with the fine eyes and the fat 
fingers and the miraculous moustache, retails his 
glances with his gloves, his simpers with his silks. 
You know French enough to begin a conversa- 
tion, and break down into English before it is 
half through, be it never so short. You know 
music enough to play to " a paying audience " 
a few opera selections, with soprano slides and 
screeches to match ; and not enough to play, or 
sing, or enjoy anything, either simple or deep, 
which might unassumingly make a part of the 
rich melody of home. You know how to " ap- 
pear well" on the sidewalk, and in the parlor 
(when there are callers) ; but you don't feel able 
to appear at all at the breakfast-table, or in the 
kitchen, or anywhere or anyhow, for the simple 
purpose of heing^ rather than seeming^ — of en- 



WHAT ELSE ARE YOU? 105 

joying and imparting enjoyment, rather than of 
" exhibiting." You are a very nice person to 
meet on the street. Passing and repassing are 
your forte. But — ivhat else are you ? 

It is a question concerning which Revelation is 
silent, whether eternity is provided with side- 
walks ; and the sham and outside life which you 
are now living may, possibly, be a poor prepara- 
tion for that position of great and stern realities, 
where we shall all be sorte.d according, not to 
what we seem to be, nor what we would like to 
be, or like to have people think us to be, but 
what we are ; — where an inch more or less in the 
length of a streamer, the width of a skirt, or the 
littleness of a bonnet, will be found to be of in- 
considerable account to the genuine welfare of 
the individual, compared with our amount of 
truth to our own internal capabilities of improve- 
ment, usefulness, happiness, and holiness, and 
of our external obedience to the will of God, as 
revealed in Nature, Providence, and Revelation. 



106 



XXIV. 

PAT MALONEY. 

A VOLLEY of awful profaiieness in the tones of 
a child's voice arrested our attention, and chilled 
our blood, as we were passing down a side street 
at the South End, a few weeks ago ; and, on 
turning toward the sound, we discovered a little 
Irish boy, smeared with street filth, and look- 
ing like a locomotive bundle of rags, who was 
pouring out his wrath against another boy, who 
had displeased him in some way that did not 
make itself immediately obvious. Despite his 
dirty and neglected condition, there was some- 
thing about his eye that revealed the presence of 
unusual intellect ; and there was a kind of gro- 
tesqueness and originality even in his fearful 
cursing, which confirmed the promise of his 
eye, and declared him capable of a nobler life. 
Dubious of any success in our attempt, and yet 
feeling strongly desirous, if possible, of doing 
something to call forth his confidence, and put 
him in a way to better things, we approached 
him for a parley. As soon as he saw our inten- 



PAT MALONEY. 107 

tion, he seemed to anticipate reproof, and looked 
as if he were summoning all his stock of natural 
and acquired sauciness to his help, for resistance ; 
so we changed our method of attack, in hope to 
put him off his guard. 

"Do you know if a gentleman by the name 
of O'Doherty lives in this neighborhood, my 
lad ? " 

" Never heerd of no sich man." 

" He is a fine, large man, and usually smokes 
a pipe, and, I think, has a little boy named 
Pat." 

" Heaps on 'em here has that name. That 's 
my name." 

" Your name is n't Saint Patrick, is it ? " 

"Never a bit of a saint I am, sure." 

" And what is a saint, do you think ? " 

" And sure, and a saint, I expect, is a mighty 
fine kind of a jintleman, and, may be, better than 
ajt?ra5^e." 

" You mean, he don't swear, I suppose." 

"Well — you see, Johnny stole my kite, and 
he made me swear ; but I don't do it in no ways 
common." 

" What did you say your name was, besides 
Pat?" 

" I did n't say ; but it 's Maloney." 

" Your father is dead, is n't he ? " 

" Yes, I 'spect so." 

" And where 's your mother ? " 



108 STREET THOUGHTS. 

" She 's to South Boston." (Meamng, in the 
House of Correction.) 

" For how long ? '' 

" For sis months." 

" And who takes care of you ? " 

" I takes care of myself." 

" How old are you ? " 

" I don't know, — I guess 't ain't none o' youi 
business." 

" I want to give you a new jacket." 

" I should like one, first rate, but you don't 
mean that, old fellow." 

"Yes, I do ; and I think you 'd look better 
with a pair of new trousers." 

" Are you a Police ? " 

" Why — yes. I 'm a sort of moral police- 
man ; but I never carry boys to the lock-up." 

" Where do you carry 'em ? " 

" I go home with them." 

" You won't go home with me. Mister." 

" Why ? " 

" 'Cause I ha' n't got no home." 

" Where do you sleep ? " 

" All about." 

1' Where do you eat ? " 

" Same place." 

".My little friend, tell me now, honestly, are 
you all alone in the world ? and have you no 
home, no food, no clothes, but these rags ? " 

His lip trembled for a moment, and his eyes 



PAT MALONEY. 109 

filled, when he bowed his head upon his breast, 
and wept. 

We led him to the City Missionary having 
charge of his district, and intrusted to the hands 
of that discreet and benevolent functionary the 
small sum sufficient to provide for the immediate 
wants of our new friend. 

Suitable provision was made for his daily life, 
so that, from being a beggar and a thief, he was 
soon transformed into a useful member of soci- 
ety. The next Sabbath saw him — well washed, 
well combed, well dressed, well pleased, and 
measurably well behaved — in one of the classes 
of one of those Mission Schools which are doing 
so much for the moral welfare of the poor and 
neglected among our citizens. And now, thanks 
to God's blessing on patient kindness, and steady 
and self-denying effort, tliere is not a brighter 
eye that there bends over the sacred page, nor a 
more reverent voice that reads its inspired and 
inspiring lessons, than those of this same little 
Pat Maloney. 

How strangely strange it is that, with so many 
Christian people within sound of the church- 
bells of Boston, so few of them should seek to 
enter upon any practical, business-like obedience 
to that great command, whose blessed result is 
that " the poor have the Gospel preached unto 
them'' I 

10 



no 



XXV. 

THE OLD APPLE-MAN. 

"Poor old man, — will nobody help him?" 
said a sweet voice, just under the open win- 
dow of the Canton Street omnibus in which we 
were seated, — while it paused, blockaded a mo- 
ment, by the corner where School Street empties 
its travel into Washington. 

Glancing hastily out, we saw a beautiful young 
girl, whose remarkably fine face we instantly 
recognized as belonging to one of the best families 
of the South End, busily setting a good example 
to a crowd of street loafers who had knotted 
together on the opposite sidewalk, and who, with 
their hands in their pockets, were laughing at 
the panic-struck perplexity and feeble dismay of a 
venerable apple-man, who had been pushed over, 
in his attempt to cross the street, by the " near " 
horse of the omnibus, and whose stock in trade 
was scudding away from him in all directions, 
like mice at the sudden advent of a kitten. He 
had picked himself up and regained his dilap- 



THE OLD APPLE-MAN. Ill 

idated basket, but, in his alarm at the throng of 
horses that, by this time, was beginning to sur- 
round him on all sides, and his (second) childish 
grief at his probable loss, he had not sufficient 
presence of mind to make even an effort to secure 
any portion of his property. There he stood, be- 
wildered, and there the able-bodied loafers looked 
on, and — laughed, and, with malicious mean- 
ness, hallooed to inquire what he would take for 
the lot, as it ran. 

The noble girl — after waiting long enough to 
satisfy herself that nobody else proposed to inter- 
fere — dashed in among the horses, and, with the 
most sympathizing words to the poor old sufferer, 
was beginning to pick up the apples, and, with a 
courage which is not, to say the least, usually 
manifested in the street, by her sex, threw her- 
self directly before the great beast of an impatient 
expressman, who was about to hurry on, and, in 
so doing, inevitably crush at least half of the old 
man's fruit, which lay under, and among, his 
wheels and horse's hoofs. 

" Please to wait a minute. Sir," said she, — as 
she encouraged the old man, now quite reani- 
mated by her active sympathy, — " and we will 
soon get them all out of your way." 

A carriage which had crowded its pole against 
our rear, had made the omnibus door unopenable 
for the time being, and as the window was rather 



112 STREET THOUGHTS. 

too small for our comfortable emission, we had 
nothing for it but to remain a sympathizing, but 
silent spectator. 

The expressman swore, and we are afraid some 
of the omnibus-drivers did the same. The loaf- 
ers gradually came to a sense of their meanness, 
and — as if suddenly recollecting urgent engage- 
ments — sneaked off. The sweet-faced girl led 
the old man — a large three quarters of his stock 
replaced — in triumph to the sidewalk, and, 
while he was mumbling incoherent thanks, slip- 
ped a shining yellow coin hito his tremulous 
fingers, and hurried off round the corner, her 
cheeks all aglow with generous excitement, and 
happy as a queen — might be, by similar conduct, 
but seldom is. 

We have no need to add the moral. 



113 



XXVI. 

A MALE IRISHMAN. 

It is a singular propensity which the male Irish 
have, on holidays, to dress tip in a black suit 
complete, — stove-pipe hat included. To see the 
street-full that hang about the Cathedral on the 
Sabbath, as bees cluster round the egress of their 
hives in swarming- time, one would almost think 
that the stock of some Israelite dealer in second- 
hand articles, who confined his attention to cast- 
off clericals, had become suddenly animate, and 
started en masse for mass. Old coats, which are 
redolent of vinegar restorations, and whose swal- 
low tails tell a tale (which it is sometimes hard 
to swallow) of former generations, are borne 
along with genuine Hibernian want of grace, 
while vests which have returned all of their 
original investment to their first owner once 
more appear in public, and mingle in general 
society. We suppose it must be more inherently 
dignified and aristocratic in Celtic eyes to appear 
in the cast-off habiliments of the elite ^ than to 

10* 



114 STREET THOUGHTS. 

originate apparel of their own, ■which, for the 
same money, would be something coarser in tex- 
ture, and something lighter in hue, though im- 
mensely more enduring in use. 

They see "their betters" in black, and prob- 
ably from their youth up they have associated 
that sacerdotal color with their ideas of all that 
is beatific in gentility and luxurious in life. Com- 
ing over, — " some in rags, and some in tags," — 
after having wielded the spade and pickaxe suffi- 
ciently to rise into easier circumstances, and 
indulge their hitherto impossible tastes, they 
make at once for Brattle Street and kindred 
localities, and, bearing good, hard-earned shillings 
in considerable numbers, they depart rejoicing in 
great bargains in this species of sable suit. Their 
inexpressibles are, to be sure, inexpressibly ten- 
der, and have a tendency toward a lighter hue 
than is needed on the knees and other exposed 
parts, while their jerkins will bear very little 
jerking without rents that are not reliable for the 
support of a family ; but still there is the odor 
of gentility about the dress, and the Irishman 
rejoices, and feels that at last he has reached his 
coveted level in society. 

Yonder goes one who illustrates our remark. 
He is on Monday leave, and so retains his Sunday 
spruceness. His coat was originally made for 
six feet two, and he is but five feet one ; so that 
tliere is even more waste about his waist than 



A MALE IRISHMAN. llo 

distinguished the late anti-Shanghai style ; and 
his pantaloons were once the property of four feet 
nine ; so that his boots (made for the general 
public, and for nobody in particular, and fitting 
accordingly) are obliged to do some service to 
supply nether deficiencies, while his hat is an 
old black, bell-crown beaver, which has, likely 
enough, hung twenty years or more on the same 
peg in the old-clo' man's den, and was therefore 
bought at a bargain ; but he looks self-apprecia- 
tive, and not merely independent, but jubilant. 
He evidently feels well. He would like to meet 
some of his old Cork companions, that he might 
show himself to their admiring eyes. He inserts 
both hands under the tails of his coat, and they 
fall over this obstruction something as the river 
washes over the cliff by Goat Island. As he 
walks thus, he will meet nobody who feels any 
better than he does. 

To be sure, his transitory finery will soon be- 
come " eradicated," as the Western orator re- 
marked, but then he can get more where that 
came from ; and until he learns that it is better 
to spend a ten-dollar bill for a new and strong 
and neat and sensible coat of serviceable gray, 
than for one that is merely black and old and 
shabby-genteel, perhaps it is the best thing he can 
do under the circumstances. But he will learn, 
by and by, with the leave of the " Know-Noth- 
ings." 



116 



XXVII. 

STRANGE CONTRASTS. 

The doors of Trinity open at secular lionrs ! 
Surely the Bishop has not turned High-Church- 
man, and established the daily office ! And if 
so, it would not account for the crowd that rush 
hastily in ! It must be that some unusual event 
is magnetizing the multitu.de ! 

The organ peals out, as we enter, and there is 
that in its resonance which betokens joy, rather 
than grief, as the key-note of the occasion. It is, 
clearly, a wedding service ! The Priest is even 
now ready in his robes, prayer-book in hand, and 
looks with expectant face toward the entrance. 
The organ pauses. A slight pair — in the dew 
of their youth — glide noiselessly to the altar, 
and the appointed words begin : — 

" Dearly beloved, we are gathered together 
here in the sight of God, and in the face of tliis 
company, to join together this man and this 
woman in holy matrimony." 

No voice follows the call for the showing of 



STRANGE CONTRASTS. 117 

"just cause why they may not lawfully be joined 
together." 

The mutual promise is made ; the mutual troth 
is i^ledged; the ring finds its place upon the 
fourth finger of the fair left hand ; the prayer is 
said, the blessing given, and the twain go forth, 
for evermore, one flesh 1 

We saw the pair — • in all their flush of happi- 
ness — enter their carriage, and drive away, and, 
as we walked on in the same direction, — from 
the crowded state of the streets, with them for a 
long time in sight, — we could not help moraliz- 
ing upon the strange mixture of human thought, 
and emotion, and purpose, that was, for the time 
being, imprisoned within the circle, of a radius 
of a few hundred feet, around us. 

A crowd of giddy boys, heedless of all save the 
excitement of the moment, thronged, with merry 
shouts, about the dashy equipage which bore the 
central figures of the scene. As that turned the 
near corner, out of Summer into Washington 
Street, the driver had to pull his horses suddenly 
to their haunches, to avoid crushing under their 
feet the wretched wreck of a poor old female 
paralytic, whose skinny hands, and yellow visage, 
and bleared eyes, and tremulous and loathsome 
aspect, furnished at once the sharpest and the 
saddest contrast to the vision of young loveliness 
that smiled so near ! Yet who shall say that that 



118 STREET THOUGHTS. 

mthered hag was not once the superior of the 
two, in excellent beauty ? who dare declare that 
she who is now young, if she live to old age, 
shall not repel the sense even more than this fee- 
ble wanderer ? 

Strange contrast ! the flood of travel next floats 
this wedding cortege to the side of a funeral train, 
and, for a moment, locks the wheels of the car- 
riage of the bride into those of the hearse of the 
dead. Turning her fond gaze away from the 
face which she loves, instinctively, to notice the 
cause of the delay, the bride — through the glass 
window of her coach, and that of the hearse, now 
opposite each to each — looked, with a shudder, 
on the coffin, and, shocked by a sight so unex- 
pected and so uncongenial to that hour, shrank 
instinctively away, and covered her eyes, w^hile 
her heaving breast showed how painful was the 
enforced suggestion that an hour of parting must 
of necessity by and by succeed this hour of 
espousal. 

Disentangled, the coach falls into a line that is 
moving slow^ly on in its desired direction, and 
keeps even pace, for a little while, with them. 
We glance, curiously, to see into what new 
neighborhood they are now unconsciously come. 

Before them is a family carriage, in which, 
propped by pillows, and swathed with shawls, 
and muffled in furs, reclines a gaunt form, the 



STRANGE CONTRASTS. 119 

hectic of whose cheek, and the hollow tone of 
whose occasional cough, indicate that he must 
soon take his place in another procession. 

Behind them, in a hackney-coach, smothered 
in luggage of foreign aspect, hurries, just from 
the English steamer, to the New York cars, a 
heavily moustached and bearded couple, whose 
grum gutturals growl discontent at their slow 
pace, and whose anxious and angry glances out 
of the windows are singularly unlike the calm 
content that saturates the aspect of the hymeneal 
pair before them. 

A charcoal cart brings up the rear ! Its saffron 
sides bear, in stupendous scrawl, the signature of 
" Chaffee & Co." Its driver — perched iipon his 
lofty seat, with a fox-tail in his cap, and his livid 
eyes in fine frenzy rolling, in a masklike counte- 
nance, tinted by his occupation to the hue which 
a negro might be supposed to have after lying 
long in pickle — shouts the cry peculiar to his 
craft, and jolts along, as if part and parcel of all 
that goes before him, and is to come after him ; 
his merry-Andrew aspect bringing to mind the 
proverb, that " no company is complete without 
a fool," 



120 



XXVIII. 

THE LOST CHILD. 

A LITTLE cliild stood, crying bitterly, on the 
sidewalk. Its bare flaxen curls streamed over 
its fair shoulders in soft and graceful ringlets, 
that testified to the gentle culture of fond mater- 
nal fingers. It was alone, and, we supposed, had 
wandered out of some near house, and gone out 
of the sunshine of its play into the sudden shadow 
of some great childish grief. But there was a 
kind of helplessness about its tones that especially 
attracted our attention, and made us curious to 
know the secret of its wailing. So we drew near 
to speak to it. 

" Well, what is the matter with you, my little 
man ? If the Queen should hear you crying, 
from over the water, ivoidd nH she wonder what 
was the matter with somebody ? " 

" I can't find mamma ! " 

" Why don't you ring the door-bell, and ask 
her where she is ? Or can't you reach up to it ? " 

" I can't find the door-bell." 



THE LOST CHILD. 121 

" Is n't it just where you left it, by the side of 
the door ? " 

"I can't find the door." 

" Is n't it in the front of the house ? " 

'• I can't find the house." 

" Ah, my poor little boy, you don't mean to say 
that you 're lost ! " 

This melancholy suggestion was quite too much 
for the dear little fellow, whose tears, which had 
sensibly subsided during the previous colloquy, 
burst forth afresh, with louder vocal accompani- 
ment than ever. To our question, repeated in 
the kindest tones which we could summon to our 
help, he at last responded, with sobbing speech : 
"I — can't — find — the — way — home ! 
dear ! — dear ! " 

" Don't cry so," replied we ; " if you cry so, 
you won't be able to tell me where you live, so 
that I can carry you home to your mamma. 
Come, now, tell me what is your name, and in 
what street you live, and we '11 soon find it." 

''' I live at mamma's house." 

" And what is mamma's name ? " 

" Mamma." 

*' How came you here ? " 

" I ran after the music-monkey." 

" And what is pour name ? " 

" Josey." 

" Josey what ? " 

11 



122 STREET THOUGHTS. 

" Mamma says I 'm ' Josey mischief,' some- 
times, and sometimes I 'm ' Josey good.' " 

" Well, never mind. Where do you live, 
Josey ? " 

" At mamma's house." 

" In what street is mamma's house ? " 

" It 's mamma's street." 

" What 's its name ? " 

" 'T is n't alive, — it 's a street. I guess it 
hasn't got any name." 

" How far off is it ? " 

"0, it 's about as far as from here to — to 
Jerusalem, I guess." 

" Is it a street that the cars go through ? " 

" No." 

"Is it a street that the omnibuses go through ? " 

" No." 

" Is it a street that has stores in it ? " 

" It 's got a store where the man sells candy." 

" Is that all the store there is in it ? " 

" He sells pea-nuts, too." 

" What 's his name ? " 

"His name is — I guess his name is Jerusa- 
lem." 

" What 's your papa's name ? " 

" Papa." 

"What does he call mamma ? " 

" Julia." 

"What does mamma call papa ? '* 



THE LOST CHILD. 123 

" Hubby." 

" Is his name Mr. Hiibbj ? " 

'' I don't know. I wish you 'd take me home, 
— I 'm so hungry." 

Just as we were making up our reluctant mind 
to relinquish the hope of getting our little pro- 
tege home without the City Crier, and consider- 
ing the propriety of invoking the aid of that bell- 
igerent functionary, there came along a boy, of 
somewhat larger growth, who instantly recognized 
the child as a resident of a street a full quarter 
of a mile away ; and, under his guidance, we con- 
ducted the precious little waif back, along the 
track of his unconscious wandering, to his moth- 
er's arms, who had just thoroughly searched the 
premises and neighborhood, and satisfied herself 
that he was gone somewhere, — where, her trou- 
bled heart had hardly time to inquire, before 
the returning patter of his tiny feet fell like 
music on her ear. She was, naturally, glad, and 
so were we ; for we, too, have children who may 
get lost. 

But we should not have taken the trouble to 
set down thus minutely this little incident, if the 
child's artless ignorance had not so strongly im- 
pressed us at the time, as we talked with him, 
with the thought that he, in that unknown street, 
was a type of so many whom we daily meet, who 
know as little of the world as he of the city, — 



124 STREET THOUGHTS. 

who are as ignorant for eternity as he for time, 
and who, though mature in a worldly point of 
view among their fellows, are, spiritually, as 
truly lost children, in the overlooking eye of 
God, as he in the eye of man. 



125 



XXIX. 

NOT CONVENIENT, TO-DAY. 

" Did you say it would be convenient, now ? " 

" No, — the fact is, I can't pay you to-day." 

" It 's now six months since you borrowed it, 
and you solemnly promised to pay me ' the next 
Monday,' and I have really suffered for it since." 

"^ I am sure, I am very sorry ; but the fact is, 
I have a great many expenses, and it is hard 
times, and I find it very difficult to get along, — 
without paying borrowed money. I '11 try next 
week, though." 

" I ivish you would. Ten dollars may seem a 
small sum for you, but /need it more than I can 
tell you. In fact, I don't see how I can, honestly, 
get along this week without it." 

" 0, I guess you'll get along, — I always do, 
somehow. Borrow it of somebody else, and pay 
them when I pay you." 

We heard no more of this dialogue, but from 
the timid and unsophisticated look of the ques- 
tioner, and from the world-worn air and aspect 
of the respondent, we estimated the probabilities 
11* 



126 STREET THOUGHTS. 

of the ultimate settlement of this account as very 
slight indeed. 

"When we were a raw college youth, we lent 
a bookseller, once, a fifty-dollar bill, — which 
paternal kindness had sent us by mail, for neces- 
sary expenses, and which we, in the innocence 
of our heart, carried into his store to get 
" changed." He ' had n't the change just then,' 
but if we would leave the bill, — in fact, lend it 
to him for a few days, — he would pay us in 
small bills. We did n't want to, but our consti- 
tutional timidity was such that we did n't really 
dare not to, as long as he had broached the sub- 
ject. Besides, the bill was in his hands, — to see 
if it were genuine, — and possession is nine points 
in the law. So we went home without our bill, 
and — we stayed there some weeks without it. 
We eventually " took it in books," and did n't 
get a very large library, either. 

Seriously, this thoughtless lending of money to 
systematic and never-intending-to-pay borrowers 
is a great and grievous nuisance. It falls usually 
on those least able to bear it. It argues immense 
meanness in the borrower, and immense green- 
ness in the lender. If, like the measles, men 
only had it once, it would be well ; but some 
hearts arc too soft ever to prompt the lips to say 
no. If parents do but teach their children to utter 
that monosyllable, — not merely when asked to 
lend money, either, — they do not live in vain. 



127 



XXX. 

WAYS OF WALKING. 

" Have yoii seen the new Doctor ? " 

" Just seen him — on the street." 

" Have n't been introduced to him ? " 

" No, — nor don't think I cai-e to be." 

" Why ? Have you heard anything why we 

should n't hke him as much as we expected to be 

able to, from all accounts ? " 

" No, I have n't heard anything against him, 

but I don't fancy the way he walks." 

" Then you would condemn a man's ' walk,' 

without reference to his ' conversation ' ? " 

" Not exactly that ; but I think you can tell 

something about a man by his habitual method 

of locomotion, and his habitual method is apt to 

manifest itself in the street." 

" What 's the matter with his walk ? " 

" Did you ever hear of a couplet or two, to 

the following effect : — 

' Hast thou ne'er noticed in the field 
The plant that reared its stalk upright, 



128 STREET THOUGHTS. 

And how it was its scanty yield 

That made its head so straight and light 1 

Eroni this a moral lesson gain : 

That he whose head is up — is vain.' " 

'' You mean to intimate , I presume, that there 
is an apjoearance of self-conceit in the new physi- 
cian's street manifestations ? " 

'' I don't mean anything else. And when a 
man struts upon the sidewalk, as if he supposed 
the gaze of the city in particular, and of the uni- 
verse in general, were turned toward and fixed 
upon himself, I think that he — is n't, exactly, 
7717/ candidate for a sick-room friend." 

" Well, I should agree with you there." 

We did n't know the parties who spoke on this 
wise in the door-way of the Post-Office, where 
we were waiting for a friend, and we have no 
idea what community or what "Doctor" they 
meant ; but we felt that, possibly, there was some 
good sense in the conclusions to which they 
came. 

Men certainly do manifest themselves — to 
eyes accustomed to read human nature — in 
their method of passing over sidewalk distances. 
We have seen persons — and clergymen among 
the number — who promenaded as if they had 
just received reliable intelligence that the king- 
doms of this world, and the glory of them, had 
been made over to their individual use and 



WAYS OF WALKING. 129 

behoof, by a warranty deed which not even Mr. 
Bowditch could pick a flaw in ; and they were 
proceeding to take possession. We had the curi- 
osity to notice, on our way up "Washington Street, 
the styles of walking that happened to be out, 
which were of a nature to reveal character. 

We overtook a meek man. He crept along 
with a look of begging the general pardon for 
presuming to intrude upon the public space ; 
turned out into the m-uddy gutter, to allow 
everybody to pass him on the right ; made him- 
self as small as possible, and finally dodged 
round a corner, into a back lane, as if he 
could n't think of troubling people any longer. 

We fell in with a j^hilosopher. He looked as 
if the visors of his eyes were down, and the soul 
had stepped out on a brief excursion to some dis- 
tant planet. He was continually running into 
somebody, and attempting to beg their pardon 
by a half-absent bow, dissuasive of censure. He 
had gone by his place in the absorption of his 
mental processes, and finally — coming to him- 
self — he turned to us (it was at the corner of 
West Street) and asked if we would show him 
the corner of Northampton Street, — only a mile 
and a half, or so, out of the way ! • 

We met a careless man. His clothes were 
heterogeneous in selection, and shabby in aspect, 
and appeared to have been worn several days 



130 STREET THOUGHTS. 

without removal from his person. A roll of 
written foolscap protruded from one side-pocket 
so far as to balance itself, more than once, as if 
to fall ; while his handkerchief — that had been 
white — dangled from his coat-tail, as if trying 
to take hold of the pavement with one hand. He 
had a bottle under one arm, which proved — by 
the sable fluid which overflowed the sidewalk, 
and splashed in every direction, as he forgot 
where it was, and let it drop — to have been pur- 
chased with an eye to more foolscap annotations. 

AVe overtook a hurried man. He steered wild, 
like a sloop under flying jib, with everything else 
down, in a squall ; and it was only by adroit 
leaps, and sudden contortions and dodges, he got 
on without overturning somebody, at every cor- 
ner. Hollis Street clock struck as he passed 
near, and the sound seemed to add wings to 
his impatience. He " broke up " at once^ and 
the last we saw of him was chasing a street car 
without signalling the conductor, who seemed to 
look upon the arrangement merely as a volunteer 
trial of speed. 

We met a haughty man. He looked portly 
and pompous, and stalked along as if nobody 
was good enough to meet or pass him. As we 
happened to know him, and to know that he 
had recently failed for a large amount, in a way 
which did not redound to his credit or comfort. 



WAYS OF WALKING. 131 

we felt as if it would have been more consonant 
with facts if his manner had been modified into 
something a little less like that which Nicholas 
of Russia, or William of Stratford-on-Avon, 
might j^erhaps have indulged in, with some 
degree of naturalness ; but which sits as uncon- 
genially upon most people, who are not Emper- 
ors of Russia, or Williams of Stratford, as the 
airs of an eagle befit a barn-door fowl. 



132 



XXXI. 

GONE TO SEED! 

" Poor old man ! How sad and helpless and 
forlorn he looks, as he shuffles along in his rags, 
turning his bleared eyes hither and thither, as if 
he saw visions in the air as he walks." 

" I shouldn't wonder,-— he 's been a hard case 
in his day. I remember him when there was n't 
a prouder step down State Street than his, — not 
a finer nor manlier glance than that which flashed 
forth from those now seared and almost sightless 
eyeballs." 

"Who is he?" 

" You would n't believe me if I were to tell 
you. You would feel that the distance between 
what he was, and what he is, is too incredible 
to be included in the experience of a single per- 
sonality." 

" Well, I don't know, — one gets familiar with 
strange transitions, as one gets on in life." 

" If his history could be written down, word 
for word, as it actually has transpired, with all 



GONE TO SEED ! 133 

liis successes and failures, all his fortunes and 
misfortunes, all his doings and undoings, men 
would turn from it as from the wild outpouring 
of some crazed author's brain, too improbable 
for the real belief of any sober man." 

" It might preach a sermon, however, as I 
judge from your hints." 

" It might, ^ — one that would make young men 
turn pale when they see the wine-cup and the 
theatre, with their congenial concomitants." 

" Tell me all about him," 

" His name is — " We had reached our turn- 
ing-off place just as the revelation was about to 
commence, and heard no more ; but we could 
anticipate, in large part, what was to be said. 

We closed our inward eyes, and seemed to see 
the panorama of his life float by, — from bright 
and gentle boyhood down to his tattered and 
tottering age. He had three gods, — an earthly 
three, — fame, lust, and gold. These, by turns, 
he worshipped, — but never Jehovah. To them 
he gave his days, his nights, his body, and his 
soul. Undeniably, they smiled upon him, each 
in turn, and gave him all they had to give 
(not much), and lured him on, from step to step, 
farther and deeper into their unhallowed service, 
until, like the deceitful demons that they are, 
they turned upon him, and cast him out, — a 
bloated and bleared and blasted thing, — round 

13 



134 STREET THOUGHTS. 

which not a tendril of human affection clings, 
toward which there comes from no grateful soul 
one loving look, or sympathizing syllable, — a 
mass of moral and physical corruption, rotting 
slowly into the horrible embraces of eternal death. 
Two texts describe him : " They that will be 
rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into 
many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men 
in destruction and perdition." " For the love of 
money is the root of all evil, which, while some 
coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and 
pierced themselves through with many sorrows." 



135 



XXXII. 

IS SHE VERY SICK? 

" Is she very sick ? " 

" I am afraid so." 

'^ I will get there as quickly as I can." 

Brief as this dialogue was, which we overheard 
as we were passing by the door of an eminent 
physician, it furnished material for considerable 
thought. We had no clew to the locality, — none 
to the parties immediately and painfully inter- 
ested. It was left to imagination to decide in 
what street, in what mansion, on what bed, with 
what anxious and agonizing group, the sufferer 
might be. It was clear, from the look and tone 
of the messenger, that the sick and perhaps dy- 
ing woman had at least one friend, whose deep- 
est affection and solicitude were stirred within 
him in dread of the result. How many other 
hearts were beginning to bleed, we could not tell. 
We thought of our own absent ones, and breathed 
a petition for their safety. We remembered how, 
under the cover of the usual aspect of the city, 



136 STREET THOUGHTS. 

lay, here and there, many such sufferers, un- 
thought of and uncared for by the multitude. 
And we besought the Great Physician to remem- 
ber and supply their need. And it came home 
to us with new force, how little real sympathy 
and intercommunication and inter-carefulness 
there is among the multitudes who throng the 
globe, each making much of his own private 
grief, but remembering seldom and coldly the 
griefs of his neighbors. 

We have a bosom friend — a friend from our 
youth — who is a physician; and through his 
eyes we have learned to look upon the sick side 
of the world with perhaps more of appreciation 
and of sympathy than is always natural to one 
whose personal experiences are mainly those of 
robust health. As we have knelt with him at his 
fireside, and heard the pathetic earnestness of 
those special petitions for those of his patients 
whose cases most appealed to his own anxiety, 
which have interwoven themselves with his sup- 
plications for the family, we have gained new 
respect for the physician's function, and have felt 
that the man of tender conscientiousness, and 
thorough skill, and sympathizing temperament, 
and religious principle, who goes from house to 
house to " heal all manner of sickness, and all 
manner of disease, among the people," approaches, 
perhaps as nearly as any one can hope to do, to 



IS SHE VERY SICK? 137 

that commanded "walking as he also walked," 
which brings us nearest to Him who " went about 
doing good." 

Steele, or somebody, says, in the Tatler, that 
"there is not a more useful man in a common- 
wealth than a good physician." And society, 
despite all it has suffered from the dolts and the 
quacks, indorses the declaration. No doubt the 
best err, and the most skilful sometimes fail ; 
but the amount of human suffering that is daily 
saved by the patient thought and wise prescrip- 
tion of " the profession " would more than fur- 
nish the agony of a great battle. 

Simple old Thomas Tusser, father of didactic 
English poetry, says, sensibly, in his " Good 
Points of Husbandrie " : 

" Ask Medicus' counsel, ere medicine ye take, 
And honor that man for necessity's sake. 
Though thousands hate physic because of the cost, 
Yet thousands it helpeth, that else should be lost." 

We wish there were always a better practical 
understanding between those whose duty it is to 
prescribe for the body, and those whose duty it is 
to prescribe for the soul. Doubtless the clergy 
are sometimes in fault, in that they enter the 
sick-room as if they were going to a funeral, 
and so cause the doctor to dread, and then for- 
bid, their insalubrious and depressing presence. 
Where all parties have common sense, this need 

12* 



138 STREET THOUGHTS. 

not be. And when the two professions have con- 
fidence in each other, they can help each other 
cure the patient. 

And where, as sometimes happens, the disciple 
of Hippocrates discerns that it is true of the sick, 
as of Lady Macbeth, — 

" More needs she the divine than the physician," — 



he ought to summon his brother of the surplice 
to a consi 
the other. 



to a consultation. Neither can afford to ignore 



139 



XXXIII. 

QUACK EELIGIOK. 

It was a sudden summer shower, and the gut- 
ters roared like young rivulets. We were um- 
brella-less, and took shelter in the doorway of 
Joy's Building. Two gentlemen descended the 
stairs in animated conversation, and, as they 
reached the doorway, finding the street flooded, 
paused just before us, and continued in the same 
earnest tones their discussion, where we could 
not choose but hear. 

" I don't want any other proof; that 's enough 
for me." 

" But you ought not to be satisfied, without 
good and sufficient evidence, in a matter of that 
importance." 

" I call that ' good and sufficient.' Here I go 
into a billiard-room, and find A and B, mem- 
bers of the church ' in good and regular stand- 
ing,' playing billiards and carousing with the 
rest. I go into a drinking-saloon, and I find C 
and D, members of the church ' in good and 



140 STREET THOUGHTS. 

regular standing,' drinking there, as much at 
home as if they never pretended to belong any- 
where else. I go into a ball-room, and I find 
E and F, members of the church ' in good and 
regular standing,' dancing there, — not merely 
common dances, but waltzes and polkas, — with 
as much zest and passion as the giddiest mere 
' worldling.' I hear G and H, members of the 
church ' in good and regular standing,' in a 
tearing passion with each other, and showing 
quite as much ungentlemanliness, and as little 
magnanimity, as are common in such cases, to 
those who make no pretence of being better than 
their neighbors. I buy goods of I and J, mem- 
bers of the church " in good and regular stand- 
ing,' and find that I am cheated, if anything, a 
little worse than I was in my last j^iii'chases of 
the same articles from a man whom I knoiu to be 
a scoundrel. 

'^ Thus I go through the alphabet, and I find 
that there is not really any difference — at least 
for the better — between the actual lives of these 
men who belong to the church, and of those who 
make no such professions. I therefore conclude 
that the whole body of church-members is un- 
sound, and that religion itself is either a cheat or 
a delusion, and that the less I have to do with it, 
the better for me." 

" Does that seem to you sound reasoning ?" 



QUACK RELIGION. 141 

" Why is it not ? " 

"Do you not reason from exceptions to the 
rule ? " 

" I claim that these instances form the rule." 

" Can you prove it ? " 

" Perhaps not." 

"Do you really believe it ? " 

" Why should I not ? " 

" You are a physician ? " 

" Yes." 

" Regular bred ? " 

" I hope so. Three years in Paris and ten in 
the hospitals, upon the top of the regular course, 
ought to entitle me to use that language." 

" Suppose I say you are a quack ? " 

" I should deny it, and be mad with you if you 
insisted." 

" But I go through Boston, and I find an Indian 
doctor in one street, who cures everything by 
one herb ; and a cancer doctor in another, who 
will conjure your cancer into a quart bottle, for 
a consideration ; and a mesmeric doctor in an- 
other, who will turn you inside out, and tell 
you how to repair all damages, for one dollar ; 
and in another, a spiritualist doctor ; and so on, 
with a crowd whose name is legion, who are 
obviously mere quacks, and nothing else. Shall 
I thence decide that all physicians are quacks, 
and that, since you are a physician, you are a 
quack also ? " 



142 STREET THOUGHTS. 

" Hardly good logic, I should say." 
" As good as )^ours, in my judgment." 
We thought so too. Doubtless there are many 
professed Christians, whose lives bear melancholy 
witness that their professions are insincere ; but 
the very discrepance which there obviously is 
between their lives and our ideal of Christian 
life, should teach us that there is genuine gold, 
though base metal sometimes seeks to palm it- 
self off in its place. 



143 



XXXIV. 

TWO INCHES! 

We were talking with a friend on the side- 
walk at the narrowest part of Washington Street, 
where there is barely room for the passage of 
three vehicles abreast. Against the opposite 
sidewalk stood a huge and heavy-laden express- 
wagon, whose driver was temporarily busy in- 
side the adjacent premises ; thus narrowing the 
scant thoroughfare so much, as to make it good 
steersmanship to get two full-rigged craft through 
the channel without collision. It so happened 
that, simultaneously, two ponderous wains, deep- 
freighted with bales and boxes, for, or from, the 
rural districts, approached from opposite direc- 
tions, and adventured the passage together. It 
would have been " rub and go," at the best. 
But both drivers — the one in his anxiety to 
dodge the lamp-post that slenderly guarded the 
curb-stone on our side, and the other in his care 
to avoid the expressman's hubs — forgot that 
they had intermediate and interjacent hubs of 



144 STREET THOUGHTS. 

their own, — protruding and ponderous affairs, 
by the way, — and the consequence was, that 
they came together in a collision that sounded 
like the thumping of two rocks, and that made 
the long rows of stout horses, to whose muscle it 
was due, fairly reel and stagger under it. 

The two drivers rose upon their foot-boards, 
and, — (now, thought we, for some develop- 
ments of human nature,) — after leaning over 
on both sides, to survey the aspect of affairs, 
turned toward each other with looks of stern 
defiance ; but, as if standing on dignity, neither 
spoke for a long half-minute. Then the redder- 
faced of the two burst forth ; " Well ! " 

"Yes!" (Dignified.) 

<' Get onto' that!" (Tart.) 

" Get out yourself ! " (Warming up.) 

" You did it ! " (Face redder.) 

" I did nH ! " (Pretty warm.) 

" Back out o' there ! " (Rising on tiptoe, 
flourishing his long whip, and putting Stentor 
into his tones.) 

"I won't!" (Mad.) 

" You won't, — won't you ? " (Red-face lays 
his whip with cracking force on his horses, 
and starts them, with a tremendous jerk, ap- 
parently in the hope of taking off his adver- 
sary's hubs by a sudden coup d'etat. The only 
result is nearly to pitch both himself and the 



TWO INCHES ! 145 

other driver to the pavement, by the inefFectual 
twitch.) 

Here began the tug of war. Both — the one 
now pale, the other scarlet with rage — poured 
forth an awful stream of curses, flourished their 
lashes round each other's heads, amid the de- 
risive cheers of the streetful of people whom 
the conflict had gathered, and made a complete 
nuisance of themselves ; until two policemen, 
appearing upon the scene, jumped upon the box 
of the team nearest us, one of whom turned 
his attention to the biped beast, and the other, 
snatching the reins from his hands, backed the 
horses a few feet, and, steering them two inches 
nearer the curbstone, cleared the difficulty, and 
started the stream of travel once more. 

How great a matter a little fire kindleth ! If 
those two inches of space had been included in 
the original programme, how much wrath and 
how many curses would have been spared, and 
how many people hurrying to the cars, and 
blocked inadvertently into the melee ^ up and 
down, as far as the eye could see, on either side, 
would have been able to carry out their plans, 
now subverted ! 

Two inches ! How often that space, or less, 
has modified human life in its eternal, as well as 
temporal auspices ! A ploughshare once turned 
up a pot of gold, and made the ploughman a 

13 



146 STREET THOUGHTS. 

small millionnaire. In doing so, it made him, 
gradually, a fop, a reprobate, and a sot. Two 
inches aside in the course of that share might 
have saved him his purity, his virtue, and his 
heaven. 



147 



XXXV. 

"I DON'T LIKE MY MINISTER." 

"Well, I know one thing, — I don't like my 
minister, and I never shall like him. He 's so 
proud, he never sees me on the sidewalk. I met 
him twice, yesterday, and he walked by, with 
head np, so grand, and took no more notice of 
me than if I were the town-pump, standing there. 
I don't like him, and I don't mean to I ^^ 

" I guess you 've told the truth, now, — where 
women are reputed always to write the most im- 
portant part of their letters, — in the postscript." 

" Well, should i/ou like a man who is so proud 
that he does n't know you, except when you are 
dressed in your best, and seated at church ? " 

" Probably he does n't see you at any other 
time. He is either near-sighted, and so fails to 
recognize you as you pass rapidly by, not very 
near him ; or he is absent-minded, and is think- 
ing about something else so intently, that, though 
liis glance may seem to meet yours, he is actually 
as unconscious of seeing you as if he were asleep 
or dead, with his eyes open." 

" I know he is n't near-sighted, because he 



148 STREET THOUGHTS. 

does n't wear spectacles ; and if he 's thinking of 
something else, I don't know as that is any ex- 
cuse, for I think he ought to think of what he is 
about, and whom he is going to meet, at the 
time." 

" Not a very remunerative subject of medita- 
tion in these streets, where, if one in every hun- 
dred who pass him has any claim upon his recog- 
nition, it is a larger proportion than belongs to 
most men." 

"When J walk the streets, I go to see and be 
seen, and, accordingly, have my eyes about me. 
It was only this morning that, if I had n't had a 
sharp look far ahead, I should have met, and been 

obliged to recognize, that odious Mr. T , the 

clown. I happily foresaw his advent, and crossed 
over just in time to save the necessity of a street 
talk with a fool, or cutting him dead, which lat- 
ter I prefer not to do, when I can help it, as I 
don't exactly desire to make him an enemy." 

" Indeed ! You surprise me ! You sometimes 
meet people, then, without speaking to them, and 
without the excuse of absence of mind, either ; 
nay, with even the boast of presence of mind, as 
displayed in the event ! Art thou consistent, my 
jewel ? " 

" My jewel " replied, but we lost the drift of 
her answer in the clatter of a fire-engine, rattling 
by, and the juvenile rush which attended it, and 
swept the street. 



"I don't like my minister." 149 

We chanced to recognize the " minister " al- 
luded to, however, and happen to know that, 
though he does not wear spectacles in public, he 
is yet so near-sighted as once to mistake, in the 
dimness of a partially lighted room, a colored 
servant, who was moving toward him, for his own 
sister ; and that he is often so absent-minded as, 
when specially absorbed in meditation upon some 
great theme of study, to forget the regular 
recurrence of his meals, and sometimes to need 
friendly admonition as to his attendance upon his 
own Sunday service at the appointed hour. As 
to pride, — though these peculiarities may some- 
times stiffen his manner into something which 
might be mistaken for hauteur^ — he is well 
known to his intimates as one of the gentlest 
and sweetest and purest and meekest of all the 
servants of the Most High. 

So little do people sometimes know, when they 
think they know so much ! and so sadly and in- 
juriously do they often mistake, when making up 
hasty judgments from insufficient data ! 

Would some power " the giftie gi'e us," not 
only to " see oursels as ithers see us," but to 
look upon others and judge them as we would 
wish them to look on us and judge us, not merely 
many "airs in dress and gait" would leave us, 
but many unkind surmises would be put at rest 
for ever in our breasts ! 

13* 



150 



XXXVI. 



TOO LATE! 



It is curious how one, who is in the streets 
every day, gets to associate certain faces and 
forms with the thoroughfares. He never reasons 
it out to the conclusion that they really live and 
move and have their being wholly in the streets, 
but as he always meets them there, and never 
meets them anywhere else, he slides into the 
silent association of them with the pave. They 
suggest it, as their habitat, just as the lineaments 
of a friend, at whose hospitable board one has 
often sat, suggest the interior of his pleasant 
home. One would be almost surprised to go into 
a house, and recognize there one of these street 
faces. 

Among the many whom we have grown thus 
to identify with this kind of out-door life, is 
one who has often excited our curiosity. Tall, 
gaunt, thin-faced, and steel-spectacled, he strides 
along with an utter contempt of all the proprie- 
ties of locomotion. His hair flies rebellious from 




TOO LATE FOR THE CARS.! 



TOO LATE ! 



! 151 



under liis hat that leans awry, his coat-collar is 
often turned in behind, as if he had forgotten to 
adjust himself after his attempt to put on his 
Raglan; his pantaloons seem self-repelled from 
his boots; his boots sometimes look as if they 
were the remnant of two pairs, differing in age 
and form, and his whole appearance is that of a 
man who dressed himself at high pressure, under 
great anxiety of mind, and without the friendly 
aid of a mirror. 

Moreover, he is always at fever-heat about 
something. He hurries along as if he had only 
five minutes in which to go a mile, and life and 
death depended upon his getting there. We 
have sometimes seen him — and we have seen 
apple-women, small boys, and heedless window- 
starers, who have felt him — in a full run. We 
understood him better than ever before, when, the 
other day, business led us to one of the railway 
stations, and, as we were standing at the window 
of the ticket-office making some inquiries of the 
clerk, in rushed this man, in a state of unusual 
frenzy of appearance, and, thrusting a bank-bill 
in the clerk's face, demanded a ticket to B ." 

" Last train gone, Sir," politely responded the 
clerk, pushing back the note. 

" 'T is n't possible ! B , B , Sir, — 

give me a ticket to B , on important business. 

I shall lose the best chance I ever had in my life, 
if I am not there in an hour." 



152 STREET THOUGHTS. 

" I said, Sir, that the last train to B has 

gone for to-day." 

" Can't be possible." 

" Been gone exactly eight minutes," said the 
clerk, looking toward the large clock which regu- 
lates the api^lication of the time-table of the road. 

" I tell you that it can't be possible that the 
train I want to go in is gone. Why, Sir, 't will 
ruin me if I ain't there in one hour ! " 

" Yery sorry. Sir, but you should have been 
here sooner. The train started exactly on time." 

" But it is advertised to start at four o'clock, 
and I am sure I started in season, and I run all 
the way, — and I must go, ■ — I tell you I must go. 
'T will be the ruination of me if I don't go " ; — 
and, pushing forward the dollar, he held out his 
hand for the ticket, as if its possession would 
create a special train for his immediate accom- 
modation. 

'' Don't be a fool. Sir," said the clerk, losing, a 
little, his patience ; " I can't sell you a ticket to 

B to-night. If it was so necessary for you 

to go, you should have started earlier." 

" Do you mean to say. Sir, that you refuse to 

sell me a ticket to B ? By what authority, 

permit me to inquire, do you refuse to accom- 
modate the public ? Sir, I will see the Presi- 
dent of this road, and represent your conduct in 
its proper light." 

" All I ask, Sir, — and while you are about it, 



TOO LATE ! It53 

you had better ' represent ' your own," — gruffly 
answered the clerk, closing the window and shut- 
ting himself into his den. 

The man turned away in great excitement ; 
whether for the President's office or not, we 
can't say. 

How many men there are who, in a less ob- 
vious and obstreperous manner, are always get- 
ting too late for something ! through miscalcula- 
tion, procrastination, or general laziness. They 
read too late at night, and get up too late in the 
morning, and hurry their breakfast so as to invite 
a fit of dyspepsia, and race off for the cars, and 
either miss them altogether, or gain them in a 
reeking sweat, which, with the plentiful air- 
drafts of these conveyances, brings on work for 
the doctor, and not unfrequently for the under- 
taker also. They rush through life, panting 
after lost time, and are never in season for any- 
thing but the last agony. 

Alas that this should be true, also, of great 
multitudes in regard to their eternal interests ! 
They put off and put off that preparation which 
themselves intend for immortal life, until death 
comes unawares upon them, — and they are " too 
late." 

Reader, how is it with you ? It was the great 
Master — with his heart full of infinite love — 
who said, ''Now is the accepted time, and the 
day of salvation." 



154 



XXXVII. 

SOCIAL HIGHNESS AND LOWNESS. 

" I TELL you, lie is n't anything ! " 

" Why not ? He certainly is comely, and 
civil, and successful in business, and in every 
respect appears like a gentleman." 

" That may be ; but his father was n't any- 
body, and his mother was of a low family." 

" What constituted the peculiar lowness of her 
family ? " 

" Why, her father was a shoemaker, — a 
' cordwainer,' it used to read on his sign ; and 
he used to mend rips in boots, and put taps upon 
shoes, for a living." 

" Was n't he honest ? " 

" I dare say." 

" Was n't he industrious ? " 

" He must have been, to have left his children 
the sum which he is reputed to have done." 

" Was n't he an amiable and agreeable man ? " 

'' That he was. I well remember with how 
much pleasure I used to wait in his little box of 



SOCIAL HIGHNESS AND LO^VNESS. 155 

a shop, while he stitched the gaps in my leathers, 
to listen to his amusing and instructive stories. 
But why do you take such an interest in the old 



man 



?" 



" I am trying to find out his ' lowness.' It 
seems he was ' honest ' and ' industrious ' and 
' amiable and agreeable,' — qualities which usu- 
ally give a man so7ne rank among his fellows ; 
and yet you say he was a low person. Was 
he vulgar ? " 

" No, he was n't vulgar ; he was quite re- 
fined, for a man of his opportunities ; but he was 
a shoemaker. Don't you understand how his 
ignoble calling should fix his position in society, 
in spite of his good, and even remarkable quali- 
ties ? Of course, a blacksmith, and a shoemaker, 
and such men, cannot be gentlemen, as mer- 
chants and lawyers, <fec. are." 

" I think Mr. Longfellow wrote a poem once 
about a blacksmith who was a gentleman ; and I 
think a good many people have considered them- 
selves honored by the acquaintance of a certain 
other blacksmith who once hammered iron (and 
Hebrew too) in Worcester ; and I don't quite 
perceive, either, how the making or selling of 
tape and delaines, or wholesale groceries, or 
stocks, as ' a merchant,' or picking a fuss gen- 
erally, as ' a lawyer,' should make one a gentle- 
man, while the making and selling of shoes, for 



156 STREET THOUGHTS. 

horse or man, should make one ' low.' And 
even if such trades make one ' low,' I don't quite 
perceive how they therefore make one's children 
' low.' You object to Mr. A. because his father 
* was n't anybody,' and his mother was ' of a low 
family.' They were, both of them, upright and 
honorable individuals, who had made the most 
of tlicir advantages, and who brought up their 
children with honor to themselves, and usefully 
for the world. And yet you vote them ' low,' 
and their children ditto ; while here Mr. X., 
whose pompous bow you returned so deferen- 
tially, a moment ago, had no father at all, in 
the eye of the law, and has no character at all, 
in tlie eye of the Gospel ; but has accumulated 
great wealth by buying cheap whiskey and drug- 
ging it in his cellars, and selling it as the best 
old port, cogniac, &c. He is a gentleman. 
There is no ' lowness ' about him." 

" You refer to Colonel X., I suppose. He, 
certainly, is a gentleman. He keeps fine horses, 
and gives fine dinners, and spends money freely, 
and has a lovely place ; and it surely is n't his 
fault that he was n't better born. Everybody 
considers him a gentleman." 

" I consider him a scoundrel and a cheat ; and 
you would, if you knew the secret history of 
his vats and casks and bottles. I would sooner 
marry daughters of mine to the poorest shoe- 



SOCIAL HIGHNESS AND LOWNESS. 157 

maker, or the sootiest blacksmith that swings a 
sledge, — so he were honest, and industrious, 
and intelligent, — than to such a bloated hum- 
bug as he, and the like of him. ' Low ! ' You 
had better wait till all these people are eternally 
sorted, and you will find that some of the high- 
est shall be lowest, as well as that some of ' the 
first shall be last.' " 

We lost the rest ; for the " Metropolitan " 
car, in which we were seated, had reached 
our stopping-place ; and we rung the bell and 
alighted, meditating upon highness and lowness, 
as they had been outlined in this brief discus- 
sion. We own that our sympathy was strongly 
drawn out toward the defender of that gentility 
which consists in a clear head and a good heart, 
as against the sham gentility conferred upon 
dolts by tlie possession of dollars. 



u 



158 



XXXVIII. 

SPEAK TO THAT YOUNG MAN! 

" Why don't you speak to that young man, 
over there, who seems lingering in hope that 
somebody will hold out their hand to him ? " said 
Mrs. A. to Mr. B., in our hearing, as the congre- 
gation were flooding the sidewalk in their emer- 
gence from church, the other day. 

" I don't know who he is." 

" It would be an excellent way to find out." 

" Yes ; but suppose I should find out that he 
was somebody, the pleasure of whose acquaint- 
ance I should not desire ? " 

" There would be no great harm done, even 
then ; while, if you can judge from look and act, 
and from his regularity and apparent interest in 
church, there is small probability of such a re- 
sult." 

" You know the customs of the city are some- 
what rigid in regard to the matter of proper and 
formal introductions." 

" I know that men never hesitate, however, to 



SPEAK TO THAT YOUNG MAN ! 159 

accost any unknown individual, when any imag- 
ined benefit, of consequence to tliemsclves, is 
dependent on an interview. Why should n't 
benevolence bo as regardless of rule as selfishness, 
and such a young man's benefit be as considera- 
ble an element in the decision of such a question 
as your own ? " 

We heard no more ; but what we had heard 
increased our already profound respect for the 
insight of a clear-headed and warm-hearted wo- 
man into the mysteries of essential truth. We 
have often thought that the comity of the sanc- 
tuary ought to override the etiquette of the 
drawing-room, and that nobody ought to hesitate 
to make the first advances toward some acquaint- 
anceship with strangers who have become fellow- 
worshippers. 

Especially do we hold this to be the case with 
young men and women, particularly the former. 
They come to the city from their distant homes, 
with hearts that ache at the separation from those 
to whom their whole wealth of love has been 
given. While hurried in the labors of the week, 
they do not so much mind the smart of separa- 
tion ; but on the Sabbath they have plenty of 
time to think of home and old friends, and it 
seems desolate to them to meet. Sabbath after 
Sabbath, with a great congregation, to no one of 
whom are they bound by the slightest tie of sym- 



160 STREET THOUGHTS. 

pathy. They come awhile, expecting that some- 
body will say a kind word to them ; that they 
may even here find a hand-pressure of welcome. 
They wait and linger on the threshold, as if to 
invite a kind word ; but it does not come. They 
intermit attendance, perhaps fall into the hands 
of some of Satan's colporters, who hold out both 
hands toward them, and in the company of error- 
ists or open transgressors they commence their 
swift descent to ruin. 

Had they been greeted, in their early attend- 
ance upon the sanctuary, with a warm welcome 
from some Christian man, who should have in- 
troduced them into the sympathetic circle of the 
good of their own age, they might have been 
saved. 

Do not sacrifice the welfare of immortals to a 
poor punctilio about propriety ! 



161 



XXXIX. 

HOW POOR PEOPLE BUY. 

'' Here are seventy-five cents. Please to give 
me ten cents' worth of tea, and ten of sugar, and 
a pound of pork, and the rest m Indian meal." 

Such was the salutation of a man, bearing ev- 
ery appearance of extreme poverty, to the family 
grocer at whose comiter we were standing, the 
other day. It brought home to our heart a new 
meaning of the text, " To him that hath shall be 
given, and he shall have more abundantly ; but 
from him that hath not shall be taken away even 
that which he seemeth to have." As we saw the 
trivial littleness of the parcels which were put up 
in response to the poor man's request, and con- 
sidered how very short a time they could reason- 
ably be expected to satisfy the demands of his 
hungry family, and remembered how much less, 
by the common law of retail, his seventy-five 
cents would procure for him than the same sum 
buys for the rich man, by the common law of 
wholesale, which is apt to govern his purchases, 

14* 



162 STREET THOUGHTS. 

it opened up a problem in social matters which, 
we confess, is beyond our depth. We have no 
remedy to suggest in which we feel much confi- 
dence, and yet it is obvious that something is 
wrong, as things are at present. As it is, the 
poor man, who gets his little money in driblets, 
and never has enough together to buy anything 
in large measure, is subjected to an extra tax — 
sometimes of from fifty to one hundred per cent 
— upon all that he buys, as the penalty for being 
obliged to purchase in small amounts ; while the 
rich man, who buys tea by the chest, and sugar 
by the barrel, and every article of family use by 
the large quantity, sometimes saves from fifty to 
one hundred per cent, as the reward for being 
able to purchase in large quantities. Thus the 
poor man, who needs to save and to economize in 
every possible way, is made practically to pay 
from twenty-five to two hundred per cent more 
for the necessaries of life than is paid, for a better 
quality of the same articles, by the rich man, 
who has no need to save or economize. 

It is easy to say that this is the simple conse- 
quence of the accidental fact that the common 
laws of trade, which are just and necessary in 
themselves, happen to work unfortunately, in this 
individual instance, upon those of small means. 
The evil is a permanent one, and one that bears 
hard upon the humbler working-classes, and 
therefore one that calls for relief. 



HOW POOR PEOPLE BUY. 163 

Why would it not be a worthy exercise of be- 
nevolence for some rich men to establish a " poor 
man's store," where all articles for family use 
should be kept, of good and wholesome quality, 
and sold at wholesale prices by the small quan- 
tity, guarding it in such a way that advantage 
could not be easily taken of it by the unworthy, 
whether rich or poor ? 

Some such place, it seems to us, would be of 
immense benefit, and afford relief to not a few 
of the worthiest members of society, whom Provi- 
dence has assigned to lowly places, and whose ill- 
requited toil now hardly keeps soul and body 
together. 



164 



XL. 

" WANT-OF-CONTIDENCE " MEN. 

"No, Sir, — I have no confidence in that 
movement. You must excuse me." 

So said a fine (but rather hard) looking man, 

as he turned away from the Solicitor of the 

Society (which is just now seeking, energetically, 
to look after the poor) ; who, we supposed, had 
been explaining to him its plans, and soliciting 
his subscription — which he did n't get. 

It occurred to us that here was a type of a 
class in our society. We have read of " con- 
Probably these others should 
At any 

rate, they never have any " confidence " in any 
" movement," the motion of which involves an 
application to them for funds. And it is curious 
to see how they will evade an appeal for benevo- 
lence, as a squirrel will dodge a dog, under, and 
over, and through, an old-fashioned open-work 
country stone-wall. 

Ask them for aid for Foreign Missions, and 
they believe that " charity begins at home." 



" WANT-OF-CONFIDENCE " MEX. 165 

Ask them to give to Home Missions, and they 
" feel interested," but they rather lack " con- 
fidence " in the '^ movement," on the ground 
that the Society has lately become very — either 
pro or anti-slavery, — they really can't tell which. 
Besides, they feel that the poor have the first 
claim, at present. 

Ask them to give to the poor, and they inquire 
into particulars ; and if it is for an individual 
that you want money, they have n't any " con- 
fidence " in individuals, on the ground that all 
impostors are individuals ! 

If it is for the Provident Association that you 
want it, they have n't any '•' confidence " in that 
" movement," on the ground that it is too bulky, 
and, taking in the whole city, must, almost of 
necessity, be very likely to be imposed upon. 
Besides, they think there is a great benefit in 
being personally brought into contact with the 
poor ; a thing which these great socie^ties neces- 
sarily disfavor, but which they regard as essen- 
tial to real happiness. 

If it is for a little parish organization that you 
want it, they have n't any " confidence " in that 
" movement," on the ground that it is too small 
in its idea, and too narrow in its resources, to 
allow of proper wholesale purchases, which favor 
economy. 

If it is for a sewing-circle, which is making 



166 STREET THOUGHTS. 

garments for the naked, they have n't any " con- 
fidence " in the garments, on the ground that 
they must, of necessity, be badly sewed, and 
then they " do all which they can afford to do in 
that way, for poor persons at their own door." 

If it is a " poor person at their own door," 
however, you may be assured they have n't any 
" confidence " in him, nor his " movements," — 
which they watch as if they had foresight of 
a " billy " in his bosom, and hindsight of a 
"jimmy" in his coat-tail, and insight into the 
most awful burglarious intentions in his mind. 
They " make it a rule never to give to beggars 
at the door, as there are societies established 
for the express pux^pose of suppressing street- 
beggary, and supporting all proper persons who 
may be in reduced circumstances." They " pre- 
sume that application to the very excellent agent 
of the Provident Association would be judicious 
and successful." Possibly they may have a 
ticket (suiTcptitiously obtained), which (having 
cost them nothing, and being salable for noth- 
ing) they freely bestow upon the unfortunate 
wanderer, whose absence is the most immediate 
and urgent object of their desire ! 

The fact is, the mean men don't intend to give 
a dollar, nor a dime, to anybody, nor to any- 
thing ; and, to evade the public shame of their 
stinginess, they indulge in these convenient plati- 



" WANT-OF-CONFIDENCE " MEN. 167 

tildes about " want of confidence " in " move- 
ments," and the like ; which, being interpreted, 
amount to precisely this : "I love my money, 
and I mean to keep it — at whatsoever sacrifice 
of feeling, principle, or reputation — until death 
and doom clutch it out of my hand ! " 



168 



XLI. 

POOR PHGEBE MURPHY. 

" No ; I know I wore my plaid-silk dress last 
Sunday. I have worn it to church three Sun- 
days in succession, — I am perfectly sure of it.'* 

" No ; I am equally sure that you wore your 
blue silk last Sunday, for I distinctly remember 
hearing Mrs. Jones say, — you know how near- 
sighted she is, — as we were coming out of church, 
* There 's Laura, now, — how well she looks in 
her blue thibet, it 's such a match for her com- 
plexion ! ' — and I told her 't was n't a thibet, 
but a silk ; — so I must b-^- right, because Mrs. 
Jones has n't been to meeting for a month, till 
last Sunday, and it must have been then." 

" Well, come to think of it, I believe you are 
right, — but it 's so strange ! Yes, on reflection, 
I 'm sure you 're right ; for now I perfectly re- 
member that when Dr. was jDreaching, last 

Sunday, about Mordecai's going to Shushan, the 
palace, ' in a royal apparel of blue and white,' I 
wondered whether it meant that he had on a blue 



POOR PHCEBE MURPHY. 169 

coat and white pantaloons, or a white coat and 
bhie pantaloons, or a complete suit of blue and 
white plaid ; and then I remember wondering 
whether the blue was of the same shade as mj 
dress I had on, or darker, like Susan Smith's 
horrid old indigo thing, that she 's worn to Sun- 
day school two years, if she has a single day." 

" dear ! Well, I 'm going to stop going to 
the Sunday school after next summer vacation ; 
mother says I may, for she says I 'm getting too 
mature to go to anything but the most expensive 
schools, and she don't like to have me thrown 
into the society of all those vulgar people who go 
there. Why, only think, that great freckled- 
faced daughter of the washerwoman that washes 
our clothes, — she that always knows the lesson 
so dreadful well, in our class, you know, — ■ Phoebe 
Murphy, — she actually presumed to speak to me 
last Sunday as I was coming out of the vestry, 
and asked me if T did n't want to be a Chris- 
tian. Great ugly thing ! As if it was any of 
her business whether I wanted to be a Christian, 
or not ; and as if she knew any more than I did 
about it ! And I never had been introduced to 
her either ! I went home and told mother that I 
did n't see what was the use of our living in a 
first-class house, and my having a private dan- 
cing-master, and taking music-lessons of the Ital- 
ian that teaches all the Beacon Street girls, if I 

15 



170 STREET THOUGHTS. 

was to be put on a level with Paddy girls, whose 
fathers and mothers work for a living with their 
hands, and have them talk to me in that way. 
And she caved in at once, and said I need n't go, 
after vacation ; but she thought I 'd better keep 
on till then, to pacify father, who belongs to the 
church, you know; because, when she wanted 
me to have the dancing-master, he would n't 
consent to any other terms than that I should go 
regularly to church and Sunday school, as he 
said, *to take the curse off.' " 

" Well, Julia, I mean to tease my mother to 
let me off, too. It is too bad for us girls to have 
to go there." 

Dr. — — passed these two misses — walking 
before us — just at this moment, and, from his 
low bow to them, and from their general appear- 
ance, we inferred that they belonged to some of 
the " first families " in his congregation ; and it 
saddened us to think how real heathenism can 
creep in, and crouch even under the shadow of 
our most Evangelical pulpits. What good does 
it do to appear to hear the Gospel in this manner, 
with the thoughts full of gowns and gossip, and 
the heart full of the empty pride of supposed pa- 
ternal money-bags, — which, after all, may, very 
likely, turn out to be bags with holes ? 

Poor Phoebe Murphy! She "actually pre- 
sumed " to speak to you, did she, and to ask you 



POOR PHCEBE MURPHY.- 171 

if you did n't want to be a Christian ? And she 
only a washerwoman's daughter, — as if her com- 
mon clay had any business to suppose that such 
a porcelain article as yourself had any soul ! 

Wait a few years, gay-robed and gay-hearted 
maiden ! Go on in the career outlined in your 
street revelation of yourself. "Come out" in 
great force, and have all the town in admiration 
of your splendid dancing, and other " accom- 
plishments " to match. Turn the heads — with 
the help of the paternal money-bag hypothesis 
aforesaid — of half the young men about town, 
and marry • somebody, at last, whose kid-glove 
bill for a year would support poor Phoebe Mur- 
phy's mother for that length of time, without her 
standing twelve weary hours per diem over the 
wash-tub. Wait a few years. 

And when the doctor has been to see you a 
great many times, and shaken his ominous head, 
and he steps out to let death enter, then look 
round for poor Phoebe, and compare notes with 
her for your respective lives. 

She never had a silk dress ; — you almost never 
had anything else. She has worked her fingers 
to the bone, to support her old mother, now long 
blind, and the rest of the family, — from sickness 
and various misfortunes, largely dependent on 
her ; — you never knew what work was. She 
never saw twenty-five dollars together at once in 



172 • STREET THOUGHTS. 

her life ; — you have often sj^ent that sum for a 
single trifle of dress. She never has had but one 
book of her own (her Bible) ; -^ you have always 
owned a Bible, but you don't know whether to 
look for the book of Nehemiah before or after the 
Psalms, so little have you read it. She never 
went to a " party," never even saw a person 
dance ; — - but, somehow, she has contrived to 
keep a sweet smile on her face, and be happy. 
You have revelled in fashionable dissipation, 
have ransacked the Old World and the New for 
a '' good time," and yet, everywhei'e, 

" The toiling pleasure sickens into pain ! 
And, even while fashion's brightest arts decoy, 
The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy." 

She has done what she could, and great will 
be her reward in heaven ! You have frittered 
away probation, and, so far as your past is con- 
cerned, have done what you could to make a fail- 
ure of life eternal. 

Alas ! if she were to ask you noiu " if you did 
n't want to be a Christian," you would make a 
very different reply ! 



173 



XLII. 

DEAD LEAVES IN STATE STREET. 

A HEAP of dead leaves in State Street, corner 
of Washington ! A curious place for them, — 
without tree or other leaf-manufactory in sight ; 
but the autumn wind plays strange freaks with 
the faded garniture of the Common and the 
parks, and whisks it away around odd corners, 
and into unanticipated nooks and crannies, as if 
it meant that the dwellers within unmitigated 
brick and mortar — whose only taste and hint of 
nature are a few square inches of dirt in the back 
yard and a few square feet of sky overhead — 
should not forget that nature lives ; that flowers 
bloom, and grass-blades grow, and trees wave, 
although they know them not. 

We saw a little scurry of red and yellow elm- 
leaves lying against the door of a magnificent 
mansion, far removed from all place of verdure, 
in the most artificial part of the town. They 
seemed mutely to read a lesson there. We won- 
dered if the proprietor of that lordly pile would 

15^ 



174 STREET THOUGHTS. 

mark and learn it, as he should crush them under 
his feet, going forth to his daily vocation. They 
seemed to testify how dead and waste a thing 
must be that is snapped from its natural stalk, 
and placed where it has no inward and vital rela- 
tion with any life-giving and life-sustaining power. 

If the owner of that mansion could see himself 
as God sees him, how dead and thriftless might 
not his life — here among gauds and gayeties and 
all manner of im-nature, without one rill of sap 
flowing in from any sweet and vitalizing source 
— seem to himself; this life, that looks so grand ; 
that so many sigh for, — would cheat and starve 
for, — would almost die for. It has indeed a 
splendor ; but it is that of the autumnal dyes of 
the forest, — the product of decay, swift-staged, 
and hurrying apace. 

It may be all fancy with us, but we cannot 
resist the feeling, as we walk the streets now, with 
these dark financial clouds lowering over the hori- 
zon, and everybody on the look-out for immediate 
squalls, that the men look like the trees. Stand 
anywhere where many trees are visible, and you 
see now no two alike in their progress toward 
denudation, but all tend visibly that way ; and in 
all their half-naked boughs, and seared and wasted 
air, they look disconsolate and troubled. Here 
is one which, but a few days ago, lifted toward 
heaven a proud coronal of verdure, which is now 



DEAD LEAVES IN STATE STREET. 175 

but as a bundle of bare twigs held up on liigli. 
And there is another, -which yet clings to its sum- 
mer iDossessions, but which, in every puff of the 
breeze, seems about to drop them all, to flutter 
away as the thoughtless currents of Leaven may 
carry them. 

And so the men look. There goes a merchant 
who, six months ago, was great on 'Change, and 
six weeks ago would have refused the offer of 
millions for his assets, who now scuds under 
bare poles, every rag gone under the fury of 
the blast. And yonder walks another, ponderous 
and pale, who still holds legal possession of all 
that has made his name a synonyme for a mer- 
chant prince, but with so wasted and tremulous a 
grasp, that he sets you thinking of some huge elm, 
which numbers yet every leaf which it received 
from the affluent hand of Spring-time, but all 
faded and yellow, — permanent thus far by the 
forbearance of the elements. To-morrow the rain 
may descend and the storm beat, and every one 
will drop, and he be left to throw his naked arms 
against the sky ! 

Thus we seem to see men " as trees walking." 
God grant that the Spring-time which re-leaves 
the trees, may relieve the merchants, and make 
both elms and men again green and flourishing ! 



176 



XLIII. 

"SUCH A PRETTY MAN!'' 

"0, HE 's such a pretty man ! I am sure I 
never saw such eyes and hair before ; and then 
the whole way in which he walks and talks and 
looks is so sweet ! " 

" Yes, I think he is good-looking enough ; but 
then I much prefer Mr. B. to your Mr. A. Mr. 
A. is such a little man, and looks so lady-like^ that 
I can't help more fancying Mr. B., who is so stout 
and strong, and looks as if he could take you up 
and throw you over the house, besides being very 
fashionable in his whole deportment. And then 
you know Mr. A. is a mere clerk, and Mr. B. has 
great ' expectations ' whenever his grandfather 
dies." 

" Well, to be sure that 's something ; but then 
I never did see any eyes like Mr. A.'s, and such 
a complexion as he has ! If you should happen 
to see him in one of those melancholy looks 
which he sometimes wears, you 'd say at once, I 
know, that you never saw his beat. He looks, 



" SUCH A PRETTY MAN ! " 177 

then, just exactly like one of the pictures — that 
of a ' Corsair ' — in my Album. 0, I expect I 
shall die for him yet." 

So they rattled on, — two school-girls, with 
satchels on their arms, on their way home from 
school. 

" Such a pretty man ! " It set us to thinking 
of what struck us as a new attribute of manhood. 
We remembered that Webster — (we are waiting 
for the large " Worcester ") — defines " pretty " 
as meaning " to have diminutive beauty " ; so we 
supposed that a '' pretty " man must be a dimin 
utively beautiful man, — which might either mean 
a man with very little beauty of any kind, or a 
man with considerable beauty of a small kind, 
which last we concluded must be the significance 
in this case intended. This hypothesis was fa- 
vored by the particulars given of that individual 
specimen under consideration. Mr. A. was lauded 
as peculiarly eminent in the department of eyes, 
hair, and melancholy looks, which we suppose 
would naturally fall under the head of small 
items of beauty for a man. It was further stated 
that his tout ensemble, especially when his atten- 
tion was particularly given to the melancholy 
department of his prettiness, strikingly resembled 
an album picture of a ^' Corsair." 

We had him immediately before our mind's 
eye ; and it struck us at once that we had seen 



178 STREET THOUGHTS. 

Mr. A. Being a " mere clerk," and of the qual- 
ity indicated in the eulogistic remarks of his 
feminine admirer, it was natural that we should 
locate him in a retail dry-goods establishment, 
where such qualities are somewhat particularly 
appreciated, and where, we understand, a good 
" Corsair" expression sometimes commands extra 
salary. We remembered him without difficulty ; 
for, although kept especially for ladies, he had 
waited on us once to the extent of a paper of pins 
and a spool of cotton ; upon which occasion we 
had been so thrilled by one of his best melancholy 
glances, that we were compelled to — laugh out- 
right on regaining the privacy of the sidewalk. 
With his fine eyes, and exquisite hair, and the 
general gentility of his appearance, he looked as 
if he had been carefully copied from the wax 
figure which illustrates the excellent quality of 
Mr. Bogle's hair-dye, displayed in the show-win- 
dow of that eminent person. 

So there is really anticipated danger of prema- 
ture dissolution in the case of one school-girl — 
in some way not explained — on account of this 
young man's prettiness ! We hope not. If this 
should meet her eye, we would urgently remon- 
strate against such a catastrophe. It certainly 
would be a mistake, and would not pay. 

It would be much better to live as long as pos- 
sible, and become as wise and good as possible, 



"such a pretty man!" 179 

and leave time and a kind Providence to arrange 
the period and manner and cause of the last 
great earthly change, together with such other 
changes as may possibly, some time, precede it. 
Meanwhile, there is this old saying of Erasmus, 
on which it may be^ profitable to meditate, 
namely, " Love, that hath nothing but beauty to 
keep it in good health, is short-lived, and apt to 
have ague-fits ! " 



180 



XLIV. 

PASTORAL CALLS. 

" How is Rev. Mr. succeeding in his 

parish, do you think ? " said a gentleman in the 
horse-cars, the other day, of a clergyman, not of 
our own denomination, to a companion with an 
out-of-town look. 

" Finely, with one exception," was the reply. 

" And what may that be ? " 

" He don't visit enough. He preaches grand- 
ly; but the better he preaches, the more the 
people want to see him at their houses, — and he 
don't come." 

" Does n't he visit the sick ? " 

" yes, — there 's nothing he 's more partic- 
ular about ; although, since his mind is very 
much occupied in various ways, it sometimes 
happens that a parishioner will be sick a long 
time without his hearing of it, — which, how- 
ever, I take to be not his fault, but that of the 
sick man or his friends." 

" Doesn't he visit those who are in trouble ? " 



PASTORAL CALLS. 181 

" Yes, — he 's very particular about that^ too.'' 

'' Does n't he make the acquaintance of all 
the families of his congregation ? " 

" Yes, — he has a rule about that. He always 
calls once a year on each." 

" ' Once a year on each,' — how many families 
should you say he had in his congregation ? " 

" About two hundred." 

" Then he makes two hundred calls a year, 
sure, besides all those upon the sick and af- 
flicted ? " 

" Yes." 

" And ' preaches grandly,' too ? " 

" There 's no doubt about that." 

" How many calls should you guess he will 
average, per week, upon the sick, <fec. ? " 

" Well ; let me see, — there 's Mrs. , and 

Mrs. , and Miss , and Miss , and 

Mr. , and old lady , who are sick now, 

whom I think of ; and some of the sickest of 
them he visits two or three times a week, I 
presume. Well ; I should say, for a guess, he 
probably must average at least as many as 
six calls of that description a week, the year 
round." 

" Six times fifty-two are three hundred and 
twelve, which, added to two hundred, before 
spoken of, make over five hundred per annum. 
Is this exclusive of all social visiting, and what 

16 



182 STREET THOUGHTS. 

might be styled calls of neigliborhoocl and friend- 
ship ? " 

" 0, of course. We don't consider a neigh- 
borly call a pastoral call, at all." 

" And — he drinks tea with you, sometimes ? " 

" Quite often ; our parish are famous for that. 
We never feel that our social enjoyments are 
complete, without our pastor is with us." 

" Well, allow me to say, that your parish is 
an unreasonable and wicked institution, if it 
finds fault with a minister who drinks tea with 
it ' quite often,' and calls regularly upon all its 
families once a year, and makes an average of 
' at least as many as six ' calls a week upon the 
sick and afflicted, — and preaches ' grandly,' 
beside, — because ' he don't visit enough.' Visit 
enough ! In the name of humanity, tell me how 
you expect a man to do any more than he does 
in that line ? If he is gadding about all the 
time, how is he to prepare ' grand ' sermons ? 
You 're an unreasonable set, and would find 
fault with Paul himself, and don't deserve half 
so good a minister as you have got, — by your 
own showing." 

" But the people can't help wanting to see 
him, can they ? " 

" They can help demanding impossibilities, 
and riding a free horse to death. There are a 
great many other tilings of more consequence to 



PASTORAL CALLS. 183 

be done than ' pastoral visiting.' Some of the 
best, most able, and most snccessful pastors of 
the day — especially in our largo communities 
— don't visit at all, unless they are specially 
sent for. You may think yourselves fortunate, 
as you are, Avithout grumbling for more pastoral 
calls." 

We thought so, too. 



184 



XLV. 

THE MAN WITH A HARD TIME. 

We met a man Tvliom we well know, and mucli 
respect, though his position in life is among the 
humblest, and we immediately discerned, from 
the perplexed and dubious look that modified the 
aspect of his large and jiiercing eyes, that some 
fresh trouble had overtaken him. (Some men 
get on so slowly in the world, that they seem 
just about to keep pace with trouble, which can 
overtake them, any time, without much effort.) 

'■' Well, friend, what 's the matter now ? " 
said we. 

" It's very singular, but my horse is dead, — 
which makes the third that I have lost within a 
few months." (The last time we saw him, a few 
weeks ago, we aided him, a trifle, in the purchase 
of a new beast of burden, - — essential to the pur- 
suit of his daily employment, — in lieu of one 
just removed by death.) 

" Yes, it is singular ; — how good a horse was 
he ? " 

" Not a high-cost animal ; I did n't give but 
fifteen dollars for him, and I suppose he might 



THE MAN WITH A HARD TIME. 185 

have had something the matter with him when I 
took him." 

" Yery likely. This makes three of about the 
same cost ? " 

" Yes, Sir, — three within the summer. It 's 
been a great misfortune to me, not so much in 
the value of the beasts, — which was, to be sure, 
though, a good deal for me, — but it has broken 
up my business so often. I have been able, in 
consequence, to get forehanded but very little 
toward the winter." 

"Are you discouraged? What do you propose 
to do next?" 

" I am at a loss." 

" You have an infirm wife and an invalid son 
to support, beside yourself? " 

" Yes, Sir, — that is my trouble. With only 
myself, I should n't so much mind it." 

" It seems a poor plan for you to be buying 
horse-bones with such uncertain remnants of life 
in them ; yet anything more spirited would run 
beyond your slender means. And without a 
horse you can't draw your cart, and without that 
you can't get your bread. Isn't there any other 
kind of business that you can go into, wisely? " 

" I sold thermometers through the streets and 
counting-rooms, last winter, and made fair wages 
at it ; but who will buy thermometers in such 
times as these ? I am rather nonplussed. I 

16=* 



186 STREET THOUGHTS. 

have thought of everything, thus far, in vain. 
I have but a very small sum left, and when that 
is gone, I tremble. It is, even now, cold, — and 
coal is but another name for money. Can you 
help me, by a bright thought ? " 

"We could n't think any bright thoughts. But 
— after parting from our friend, having done the 
best we could for him — we thought a good 
many sad ones. It seemed very strange to us 
that money should be of so much consequence ; 
that a man must starve, and his wife must starve, 
and his child starve, unless he has money ^ or some 
way to get it. It seemed very strange to us that 
this good man — who has toiled "like a Trojan," 
now more than threescore years, always honestly 
and always earnestly, and not often, if ever, un- 
wisely — should, with all this effort, have succeed- 
ed only in just keeping his chin ever above the 
waters of starvation ; while yonder is a knave, who 
never did a hard day's work in his life, and sel- 
dom has done an honest one, who has yet accumu- 
lated houses, and lands, and horses (worth more 
than fifteen dollars), and plenty of money in the 
bank, and has never a wife or child to be fed by it ! 

We thought of the old Latin proverb, " Deus 
omnibus quod sat suppeditat,''^ — and remembered 
that God is, after all, the best judge of what is 
enough for man here, while He is pledged to see 
justice done in the end. 

Eternity will make it right ! 




"WHEN ADORNED, UNADORNED THE MOST. 



187 



XLVI. 

WHAT THE LADY HAD ON. 

It is very seldom that we notice a lady's dress. 
We have often been so oblivious upon that sub- 
ject, as to be totally unable to satisfy the anxious 
questioning of our female friends, as to the mo- 
mentous details of the personale of a bride, on 
the occasion of her wedding ceremony. And it 
has ever been a subject of lasting mortification to 
Tis, that, after having seen Queen Victoria several 
times, in her comparatively incog, explorations 
of the London Crystal Palace, in 1851, we have 
always found ourselves unable to describe " what 
she had on," further than has been involved in 
the clear reminiscence that, upon those occasions, 
she did not manifest her crown and sceptre. 

The other day, however, certain feminine ap- 
parel did make an impression upon our con- 
sciousness and memory. It happened that there 
was seated, opposite to us, in a " Metropolitan " 
car, a fair-faced female, of obviously Hibernian 
descent, who attracted our attention by the spe- 



188 STREET THOUGHTS. 

cial effort which she modestly made to repair cer- 
tain damages which had happened to the lacing 
of one of her boots, disclosing thereby a mini- 
mum of hose, of a hue that would have appalled 
a washerwoman, and of a texture that was " open- 
work " beyond the pattern of any loom yet adapt- 
ed to the weaving of that much down-trodden 
article. There was such an overpowering incon- 
gruity between this nether exposure, and the 
dashy bonnet and veil which furnished the other 
extreme, that we glanced with some curiosity at 
the general individual, after the conclusion of 
her immediate toil permitted such a survey. It 
was " Brummagem " let loose. Our memory is 
not the best, and we may have forgotten a con- 
siderable percentage of the extra and especial 
articles of her adornment, but, so far as we can 
recall it, the inventory was as follows : — 

Itenij — one pair of (professedly gold) ear- 
rings, — large (say one ounce each). 

Item — one chain and pencil (same kind of 
gold). 

Item J — one small heart-slide, on said chain 
(do. do). 

Item, — one bunch of ''charms" thereunto 
attached (do. do). 

Item, — one large breast-pin, (say one and a 
half inches by two,) (do. do.). 

Item, — one smaller breast-pin, (lower down,) 
(do. do.). 



WHAT THE LADY HAD ON. 189 

Item^ — six buttons upon — something (same 
metal) . 

Item^ — two bracelets, (one on each stalwart 
arm,) (do. do.). 

Item, — five rings on three (fat) fingers of one 
hand (do. do.). 

Item, — four rings on do. do. of the other 
(do. do.) 

Item, — one buckle upon the ribbon encircling 
her waist (metal not confidently stated). 

Item, — one portmonnaie, gaudy but not neat 
(seen better days). 

We noticed no special policeman having her 
safety in charge, and concluded therefore that 
the lady took her own risk of robbery and mur- 
der, in going, thus lavishly adorned, into general 
society. And as we have observed no subse- 
quently reported coroner's inquests that would 
meet her case, we indulge the hope that she 
escaped the garrote, and returned herself (and 
cargo) safely to the embraces of her (naturally, 
one would think) anxious friends. 

Some old poet so far once forgot himself, as to 
propound the paradox, that woman is, " when 
unadorned, adorned the most." We have no 
remarks to make in reference to his folly, except 
to express the wish that it had been his fortune 
to have enjoyed our seat upon this memorable 
occasion. With our opportunities of observation. 



190 STREET THOUGHTS. 

he might have modified his opinion. If he had 
had some slight pecnniary interest in the Great 
Galvanic Company for the manufacture of Peter 
Funk jewelry, we feel sure, not only that he 
would have done so, but that he would have 
taken down the lady's name, to be presented to 
the directors of that company, as an imminent 
candidate for a (galvanized) gold medal, as a 
token of grateful appreciation of her personal 
exertions as their circulating " medium." 



191 



XLVII. 

BUSINESS IN BUSINESS HOURS. 

Business led us into State Street, the other 
day, between one and two P. M., and by the lower 
corner of the old Post-Office we met an early 
friend from the remote country, who broke out, 
after brief salutation : — 

" Do tell me what is going on here ? What is 
the meaning of this great crowd of men ? Is it 
a funeral, or a fire, or a new murder, or what is 
it ? Everybody seems rushing down this way in 
a tremendous hurry." 

" I see nothing unusual," we replied, after a 
long look up and down the street. 

" Nothing unusual ! " replied he. " I have n't 
seen so many men for a month ; and I have n't 
seen such an anxious-looking crowd since that 

that surrounded the Court-House, at the 

great trial of for homicide." 

" Why, friend, don't you know that this is 
State Street, and that the banks close in twenty 
minutes, or thereabouts, and that all these are 



192 STREET THOUGHTS. 

business men, wlio are ' rushing ' to pay their 
notes, or to make deposits, or to cash their 
checks, or to do forty other business things, some 
of which are easier said than done these hard 
times ? " 

" Well, no, I really did n't ; or, rather, I did n't 
exactly conceive that this was it. But, on the 
whole, I think these are sensible men. It is a 
good thing to have notes paid in season, and to 
have everything else done up promptly that needs 
doing. No doubt they '11 sleep enough better to- 
night to pay for their hurry now. Men are rea- 
sonable creatures, and it ain't reasonable not to 
do business in business hours, if you do have to 
hurry.'' 

"We thought of our friend's remark, afterward, 
in a sense in which he hardly intended it ; and 
we wondered how many of those merchants, who 
were hurrying as for dear life to save their credit 
and solvency at the bank counters, were making 
any preparation whatever to avoid an eternal 
" failure." 

It is a good thing to " do business in business 
hours, if you do have to hurry." The business 
of eternity is pressing, and must be done here. 
This life — liable to terminate at any moment — 
is its " business hours." Therefore it is reason- 
able to do that business first which cannot wait, 
yet which must be done. But how many of these 



BUSINESS IN BUSINESS HOURS. 193 

merchants there are, who take little or no thought 
of the demands of God, their infinite and eternal 
creditor, and make next to no effort at all to pay 
him what they owe. 

How delightful it would be to see the streets 
crowded with men looking as anxious to jDlease 
God, and keep his commandments, as these State 
Street faces look to meet their immediate finan- 
cial emergencies. And how much more " reason- 
able " they would be in that anxiety, even than 
they are in this ! " Seek ye first the kingdom of 
God and his righteousness, and all necessary 
things shall be added thereunto." 



17 



194 



XLVIII. 

THE BEST NEED WATCHING. 

We left our chaise standing, a few moments, 
before the door of a friend in one of the most 
busy streets of dwellings, and when we came out, 
the whip was gone. One of our neighbors, on 
the same day, left his front door ajar, while he 
went up to his dressing-room to get some trifling 
article which he had forgotten on going out, and 
on his return found that a valuable top-coat, 
which had been hanging quietly on its nail, had 
departed. Another, making his matutinal visit 
to his vestibule, saw that his door-mat had sud- 
denly vanished. A lady friend, on emerging 
from an omnibus, felt for her portmonnaie for 
the necessary five-cent piece, and discovered that, 
with the considerable sum which it contained, it 
had mysteriously disappeared. 

A few days since the door-bell of a large man- 
sion rang in early calling hours, and a genteelly 
dressed male visitor, on inquiry for the lady of 
the house, was ushered into the drawing-room, 



THE BEST NEED WATCHING. 195 

sending up an elegantly engraved card. The 
lady delayed a little, to grace herself especially 
to meet the distinguished gentleman who had 
forwarded his name, wondering, the while, to 
what circumstance she owed the unexpected 
honor of a visit from one whom she knew only by 
reputation. On entering the parlor at last, she 
found, however, that the distinguished gentleman, 
tired, probably, of her delay, had departed ; and, 
while mourning her loss in not having shown 
greater alacrity, and wondering a little at his 
extreme curtness of manner, she discovered that 
several small articles of virtu^ together with a 
gold card-case, and other matters of considerable 
value, had accompanied the strange visitor on his 
abrupt departure, and discerned that she had 
dressed herself to meet a thief, instead of a poet. 
Thus the denizens of a city live in continual 
conflict with a knavery that is well-nigh omni- 
present. At best, and under the most vigilant 
police surveillance, we can call our daily life lit- 
tle better than a state of armed neutrality. We 
are swindled from our garrets to our cellars. 
Strange Irishmen fatten on the cream of our 
kitchens, while we demurely eat general skim- 
milk in our dining-rooms. Grocers sand our 
sugar, and then charge us extra for their trouble ; 
while our bakers and our butchers, and all their 
kindred, hardly feel that they can afford to be 



196 STREET THOUGHTS. 

honest, — such is the general habit of cheating ; 
— and so we go. 

No^y the practical bearing of all this is to the 
point of the general testimony which society 
bears on its face to the fact of human sinfulness, 
and the universal need of labor to the end of 
general righteousness. No man can go about 
any great city, and thoroughly scrutinize all its 
character, without feeling that, left to itself, and 
its inherent tendencies, it would gravitate swiftly 
downward. The best cannot be " best " without 
religion, and the bad grow momentarily worse, 
in its absence. Hence the Gospel is a social 
necessity. 

We often think, in this connection, of the droll 
remark of a drunken vagabond whom we once 
(out of pity) hired to haul certain loads of gravel 
for our sidewalk. We were to give him a fixed 
price per load. At nightfall, his work being 
done, he called for his money. We inquired the 
amount. He replied that we had better count 
the loads, as they had been dumped in separate 
heaps, and were easily recognizable. 

" But," said we, " have n't you counted them ? " 

" In course." 

" Well, how many are there ? " 

" Twelve." 

" And that, at one shilling a load, makes pre- 
cisely two dollars." 



THE BEST NEED WATCHING. 197 

"Yes." 

We handed him the money, when, as he turned 
away, he said : '' If I were you, I would count 
'em." 

" Why ? " 

" ' Cause the best on us need ivatching- 1 " 



17* 



198 



XLIX. 



COOLER! 



Various are the reminders that the last days 
of Autumn are swiftly merging into Winter. 
The glory of the woods is well-nigh faded into 
the dun hue of December. 

" Where is the pride of Summer, — the green prime, — 
The many, many leaves all twinkling ? Three 
On the mossed elm, three on the naked lime 
Trembling, and one upon the old oak-tree ! " 

Ice shows itself in the morning, glazing, with 
its thin glitter, the hoof-prints where the rain 
fell yesterday ; fringing the edge of the creek ; 
flecking the corners of the window-panes. 

The great birds fly. The hoarse " honk " of 
the wild geese floats down from harrow-shaped 
flocks heading toward the South. Black ducks, 
by twos and threes, heavily propel their ungainly 
forms back and forth from the sea to the inland 
lakelets. Corpulent crows, big enough and black 
enough to sit for the picture of the ' ebony bird ' 
that, 

" Never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting 
On the pallid bust of Pallas," 



COOLER ! 199 

croak and caw in the tops of the stripped 
hickories and denuded chestnuts. 

The squirrel goes nutting without reference to 
' private grounds,' and whisks his bushy tail in 
the face of wanderers among the woods, as if he 
had n't the slightest fear of their finding his 
hole, or coming off victorious over himself at a 
game of "• hide and seek." The cows select the 
sunshiny corners of the pastures, and chew their 
cud the more, the less grass they can get for 
lunch between the hay-meals, which begin to 
remind them (don't they think ?) of the icy 
months. 

The "Fringed Gentian" — last of the family 
of flowers — waves its long peduncles, with their 
slender-tufted bells, among the withered leaves 
and withering grass, like an azure flag of de- 
fiance held up against the Frost-king. But day 
by day it wavers, until the sudden onset of some 
frigid night, with its premature white squall, 
conquers it, and at the dawn the champion, 

Half-buried in the snow, is found 
Still grasping in his hand of ice 
That banner with the blue device. 

In the town, we have also the signs of in- 
creasing atmospheric rigor. The harsh clatter 
of coal discharging upon the sidewalks ; the 
wheezy, drowsy drone of sawyers sawing with 
their saws ; the twinkling eyes of fuel-sellers 



200 STREET THOUGHTS. 

and stove-dealers ; the quickened pace of the 
down-town merchant hasting matutinally to his 
counting-room ; the dressy look of the newly 
overcoated and beavered street-people ; the brief- 
er sunshine ; the leaf-strewn promenades ; the 
first cosey fireside family confabulations ; and, 
finally, the advent of the pioneers of the in- 
coming 7'eg-wie of concerts, lectures, operas, and 
other evening-annihilators, — betoken the begin- 
nings of the Winter that is to be. 

" He hath made everything beautiful in his 
time " ; and the human mind is so adapted to 
the universe in which it has its place, that it 
welcomes every change of the seasons — however 
it may reluct from some features of that which is 
coming — as an inlet of new pleasure. And, 
with all its severities and storms. Winter has 
many charms, especially to him who is so happy 
as to have a home. The semicircle around the 
hearthstone hath more magic in it for him, than 
all other geometric forms can elsewhere enclose. 
And when the drudging day is done, and the 
gowned and slippered pater familias unbends 
before the cheerful blaze, and the little ones 
climb his knee, and cluster around his chair, 
and Madaitie sits smiling by, and the evening 
newspapers are chatted over, and the familiar 
volumes are taken down from their well-known 
shelves, or the new leaves of some damp candi- 



COOLER ! 201 

date for a share of the grateful appreciation of 
the public are cut and conned, — there is hap- 
piness there, whose rich and hallowed magnet- 
ism loses nothing, in comparison with what it 
gains, from the smiting of the sleet against the 
windows, and the howl of the Winter-fiend over 
the chimney-tops. 

Let it come, then, — as it will come, — 
quickly ; let it come. As Bryant says to the 
November sun : — 

" Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee 

Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way, 
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea, 

And man delight to linger in thy ray ; 
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear 
The piercing Avinter frost, and winds, and darkened air." 

The benison of God will be upon us, according 
to our faithfulness to him, through all the days 
of frost, as through all the months of flowers. 
Every snow-flake's exquisite form will be a mon- 
itor of his painstaking for his universe, and 
Winter days will all unite with those of its sister 
seasons in their arguments for God with men. 

" Only they would that we should remember 
the poor." 

Let truth add the record, of each one, — '• the 
same which I also was forward to do." 



202 



STOVE-PIPE HATS. 

"Plow are yoii?" 

" How d' ye do ? Dear me ! how you are al- 
tered ! I hardly knew you. What makes you 
look so unlike yourself? " 

" I don't know, I 'm sure. 1 'm not aware of 
anything unusual in my looks or condition." 

" Ah ! I see how it is ! You 've donned a 
' stove-pipe ' hat, in place of the soft felt chapeau 
which you have worn so long." 

" Don't you like it ? " 

"No." 

" Is n't it becoming ? " 

"No." 

" Is n't it sensible ? " 

"No." 

" Why not ? " 

" It is n't becoming, because there is no sort of 
fitness between its shape and the contour of any 
human form, and its cylindrical box is as un- 
gainly, as a terminal arrangement for a human 



STOVE-PIPE HATS. 203 

body, as a bushel-measure would be for the capi- 
tal of a Corinthian pillar. And it is n't sensible ; 
partly because it is n't becoming, and partly be- 
cause its material is too rigid for comfort and too 
perishable for use. You can't put it on your 
head without tempting a headache. You can't 
put it under your seat without risk of soiling it 
beyond repair. You can't put it into your pocket 
at all ; and joii can't sit down on it without mak- 
ing a wreck. In short, in wearing it, you put 
yourself to immense inconvenience for the sake 
of making yourself look as uncomely and ridicu- 
lous as so well-made and sagacious a man as 
yourself can conveniently do." 

" Well, really, you are down on me, — and I 
don't know but you 're more than half right ; 
for, to tell the plain truth, I have n't had an easy 
moment since I was persuaded, this morning, to 
invest in this ' new style.' My head feels as if it 
had been in a cheese-press all day, and I actu-. 
ally did n't know who I was, as I saw my reflec- 
tion, just now, in the semi-mirror of a shop-win- 
dow. But I suppose it 's ' the thing ' to wear 
them, and men who want to keep in society must 
submit." 

" Or make society submit, which I much j^re- 
fer, and which, so far as hats are concerned, I 
mean to do. If society does n't like me in a 
chapeau, it need n't ; — 'I still live.' " 



204 STREET THOUGHTS. 

We could n't help wondering, as we walked 
along, how the Apollo or the Laocoon would look 
in a " stove-pipe " hat, and we imagined to our- 
selves the dismay of the old art-loving nation at 
such a spectacle. We remembered that the 
Greeks wore nothing to modify or conceal the 
expression of the head, in their ordinary life, ex- 
cept that in certain trades, or on journeys, and 
when especially exposed to the violence of the 
elements, they sheltered themselves under the 
broad-brimmed Treracro?, or the semi-oval ttZXo?, 
such as Charon used to wear in his subterranean 
ferryings. Helmets, indeed, protected the brain 
from the dangers of the fight, but the broad- 
brim, and the skull-cap, and the crested Kvverj, 
were all conceived in the spirit both of utility 
and grace, and were no more like the cylindrical 
abominations " which disturb our peace," than 
Venus was like Yulcan. 

. We have never seen any history of the rise and 
progress of the " stove-pipe " hat, nor is any 
man's name (that we are aware of) permanently 
associated with its odious discovery. Doubtless 
he has lived since Dante, or we should read of 
his punishment among those who have insulted 
Nature and her bounty, — 

" E spregiando Natura, e sua bontade," — 

in the third ring of the Seventh Circle of Per- 
dition. 



STOVE-PIPE HATS. 205 

The Lounger somewhere has a paper on head- 
coverings, which, if we rightly remember, urges 
the theory, that the quality of a man may be in- 
ferred, with considerable accuracy, from the style 
of his hat. We are of opinion, that such infer- 
ences may often be drawn with great accuracy ; 
and our opinion is confirmed by the fact that sen- 
sible hats, — soft, rich in texture, flexible, yet 
elegant in form, something like a military cha- 
peau^ and something like the old cocked hat of 
our fathers, — we notice, are much worn by sen- 
sible men. 

We wish the artists — than whom no one can 
be more keenly alive to the bad taste of the stijBf 
cylinders — would lead off in a crusade against 
them. Doubtless the hatters make more money 
in their manufacture and sale than they could do 
in that of those which cost less and last longer ; 
but perhaps the hatters have had their harvest 
long enough. Let the artists lead off, and they 
can make opposition " respectable,'' which is all 
that is necessary, in this case, to make it effective 
and universal. 



18 



206 



LI. 

HERE A LITTLE AND THEEE A LITTLE. 

It is a true proverb, that " one half of the 
world does not know how the other half lives." 
It is probably also true, that four fifths of the 
world have no idea on how little, and with how 
little, and for how little, a man can live. Ask a 
rich man how much is required for human sup- 
port for a twelvemonth, and he will give you an 
answer in thousands. Ask a man in " comfort- 
able circumstances," and he will answer you in 
hundreds. Ask a " day-laborer," and he will an- 
swer you in hundreds, still. Ask a downright 
poor man, and he will give you an answer that 
will both amaze and sadden you. Follow that 
poor man home, — if he has any home, — and 
see, with your own eyes, what and how much 
(say, rather, how little) enters into the actual 
daily pabulum of his corporeal life, and your sad 
amazement will, for the time, take complete pos- 
session of your soul. 

The physiologist, indeed, is prepared to demon- 



HERE A LITTLE AND THERE A LITTLE. 207 

strate that the body can be kept to the perform- 
ance of its functions by the daily supply to its 
digestive organs of a very few ounces of fibrine, 
gluten, fat, and sugar, — obtained from some one 
or more of an almost unlimited range of edibles ; 
and that the matter of shelter, — whether by gar- 
ment or dwelling, — except in extremes, is not a 
matter of life or death. So that, reduced to his 
ultimate conditions of existence, man can live^ if 
he can anywhere and anyhow get his diurnal 
ounces to put in his mouth, — taking his chance 
as to the rest in the streets, trusting charity for 
an old coat now and then, and empty boxes 
or the lee of an out-house for sleeping-quar- 
ters. 

Ask any intelligent policeman, — some of the 
best natural intelligence we have in Boston may 
be found in our police department, — and he will 
tell you facts on this subject that will sound like 
extreme fiction. There is an element of our reg- 
ular population to which a board-bill is a thing 
unknown, and which no grocer or market-man 
enrolls in his list of regular customers. There 
are men, women, and children among us who live 
nowhere in particular, who eat what they can 
get, when they can get it, and who sleep — in 
the warmest place they can find when they are 
sleepy. 

And above this class — which has gravitated 



208 STREET THOUGHTS. 

to the lowest level on which human life can be 
sustained — is a larger one, which is composed of 
those who have some regular abode and some 
regular effort at employ, but whose earnings are 
so inconsiderable and uncertain as to compel 
them to reduce their daily expenditure almost 
to the minimum on which soul and body can be 
kept together. Many of this class are truly re- 
spectable and worthy. Most of them have known 
better days. Some sudden reverse, or a long 
course of misfortune, or weary and wasting ill- 
ness of themselves or those whom they loved and 
supported, has reduced them to this position, and 
they find it very hard to rise again. The abyss 
of poverty, in this respect, resembles that of sin, 
and both are like that of the Infernal Eegions, 
of which Virgil speaks : — 

" Facilis descensus Averno ; 
Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis : 
Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras ; 
Hoc opus, liic labor est. Pauci, quos aequus amavit 
Jupiter, aut ardens evexit ad aethera virtus, 
Dis geniti, potuere." 

These persons often exercise great ingenuity, as 
well as patience, in their methods of gaining the 
mere pittance on which they live. Some of 
them are jobbers on an infinitesimal scale, and 
to them a great fall of snow is a windfall ; for 
on the slight capital of a second-hand shovel, plus 



HERE A LITTLE AND THERE A LITTLE. 209 

the muscles which they manage to keep sturdy 
on their coarse fare, they can do a remunerative 
business in a few hours, — thanks to the city 
ordinance which compels the occupants of all 
tenements to clear the sidewalks immediately 
after the storm is done. 

Some of them are pedlers on a small scale, if 
they can get together a dollar in ready money, or 
obtain a short credit from any dealer, buying 
such little articles as families are apt to want, 
and selling them from house to house at an ad- 
vance. "We personally know and greatly respect 
one modest and estimable girl, of strict integrity 
and excellent Cliristian character, who, cast upon 
the city a stranger, friendless, and with no means 
of sustenance, with an indomitable and heroic 
energy, supported herself for months (while reg- 
ularly pushing her way up, the while, in one of 
our public schools, in a manner that excited the 
respect and admiration of her teachers) by sell- 
ing envelopes and such trifles of stationery 
through the streets, in the intervals between 
school hours. To be sure, her entire expendi- 
ture for room-rent and food (she went without 
fuel) did not exceed one dollar and fifty cents 
per week ; yet she did neither freeze, nor famish, 
nor complain, but kept pushing on, with the aim, 
by God's blessing, of becoming a teacher herself 
by and by. 

18* 



210 STREET THOUGHTS. 

** O, there be moral heroes, who, in low 
And narrow rooms, with naked walls, and cold 
And cheerless aspect, with scant food, hard-bought. 
And moist with many tears, fight the great fight 
Of life, — truthful toward God, honest toward man. 
On them the Eternal Face, that frowning looks 
On Austerlitz and Waterloo, smiles with 
A sweet jDaternal smile ; while from the lips 
That shall pronounce our doom come floating down 
The plaudit words : Better is that poor man 
Who his own spirit rules, content to bear, 
Unmurmuring, the bitterness of life. 
Than the most valiant victor, who, in blood, 
Prevails ; or hoariest sage, or orator. 
Whose thunder of renown shall shake the Avorld." 

The object which we have in view, in these 
few words, will be accomplished, if such of our 
readers as may have shrunk from these humble 
workers, with something of disgust or fear, shall 
henceforth regard them with a more patient and 
helpful interest. It will cost each but little to 
contribute his or her moiety to the supply of 
their necessary wants. And it is better for a 
man sometimes to lose that contribution, by be- 
stowing it upon an unworthy applicant, than to 
secure himself against such loss, by shutting up 
his bowels of compassion against his brother who 
has need. 

He who considers every such case, and deals 
with it on its merits, will never be left to take 
up the lament which Hood has written in his 
"Lady's Dream": — 



HERE A LITTLE AND THERE A LITTLE. 211 

" The wounds I might have healed ! 

The human sorrow and smart ! 
And yet it was never in my soul 

To play so ill a part : 
But evil is wrought by want of thought, 

As well as want of heart ! " 



212 



LII. 

GOOD bye! 

*' Good afternoon ! " 

"Adieu!" 
' "Farewell!" 

" Portez-vous Men ! " 

" Good bye ! " 

We distinguished each of these formulas of 
parting, from the* lips of a fair dissolving group, 
just emerged from the door of the Masonic Tem- 
ple, as we passed; and the last — intoned with 
singular sincerity of sweetness, by a voice re- 
markable for its suggestion of the genuineness 
of its emotional utterance — aroused an old 
thought of ours, of the vast superiority of that 
compound over its competitors, as a benedictive 
phrase. 

" Farewell," we know, is juicy old English, 
coming from the imperative of the verb " fare " 
(Saxon far an) ^ which had the meaning, now 
obsolete, of " to go," " to pass on " ; making the 
compound take the sense of " pass on well," i. e. 



GOOD BYE ! 213 

" I wish you a pleasant absence." In this, its 
strict, original significance, it was only used to 
" speed the parting guest," and was not consid- 
ered applicable from his lips toward those who 
remained at home. But it soon slid into the 
general expression of a wish of happiness from 
either of two separating parties to the other ; 
and so it now means, " fare you well," i. e. 
" may you be happy." 

The savans have striven hard to orowd the oak 
of the other phrase back into this same acorn. 
Webster says, " In the common phrase ' good by,' 
' by ' signifies ' passing,' ' going,' and so the 
phrase signifies ' a good going,' ' a prosperous 
passage,' and is precisely equivalent to ' fare- 
well.' " All of which we respectfully doubt. 
Without presuming to know more Saxon than 
the aiithor of spelling-books which sell at the 
rate of a million a year, and of dictionaries 
which have set the whole land by the ears, — in 
an etymological point of view, — we fall back 
upon the common sense of Quintilian : " Docti 
rationem artis intelligunt^ indocti vohiptatem " ; 
and, since the art of making words is an art 
which has followed the " vohiptatem " of the mass 
of word-users, rather than the "• rationem ^^ of 
word-critics, we venture the opinion that Hamlet 
came nearer than Noah of New Haven ever did 
to the right etymology of this word, when he 



214 STREET THOUGHTS. 

said to E-osencrantz and Guildenstern, on their 
exit: "Ay, so, God be wi' you," which Mr. Col- 
lier in his edition has compressed into " So good 
bye you." 

This we understand to be the meaning of the 
compound. It is more than a mere wish, like 
the other ; it is a prayer, — a collect for all days. 
It reverently recognizes the Supreme ; his acces- 
sibility ; his interest in his children ; tlie blessing 
there is in his presence with us ; and it invokes 
that presence, as a guide and guard and joy to 
him on whose behalf the prayer is made. The 
French '^ Adieu, ^^ which is become well Angli- 
cized, is also a prayer, but differs in form. It 
stands for '' I commend you to God," which 
is more indefinite, and less hearty. We like 
" Good bye," because, amber-like, it imprisons 
this thought of devotion. 

We like it also because, by its play of the 
vocal organs, it favors a more earnest and affec- 
tionate expression of parting interest. The natu- 
ral enunciation of " Adieu," especially from lips 
unaccustomed to French articulation, is hard and 
ungainly, and comes too near the sound of that 
vulgar affirmative response (in which swains are 
wont to utter assent to the questions of the mar- 
riage service), " I dew," to secure the best effect. 
So, also, when people say " Farewell," they are 
very apt to speak in an affected and trivial man- 



GOOD bye! 215 

ner ; while the regnant sounds of the word 
always come from the superficial half of the 
vocal machine. " Good bye," on the contrary, 
calls into play the deeper and heartier and 
stronger half. It is not only capable of, but it 
invites, a warmer and weightier utterance. Its 
guttural depth seems to imply a tighter hand- 
pressure than we expect from him whose lips 
and teeth are saying "Farewell." The mere 
presence of the word "good" seems to deposit 
in the compound a stronger capability of adapta- 
tion to the expression of benignant feeling. It 
comes, therefore, to be in use as a domestic for- 
mula. Children almost always choose it, and em- 
phasize its first syllable, when they feel strongly, 
in a way that throws it up from the dead level of 
speech, and makes it a memorable word. Thus 
it becomes so steeped in the fragrant odor of 
family associations, that it exhales their grateful 
aroma when it is used in the street. 

It is doubtless because it is less manageable 
in rhythm and rhyme than its synonymes, that 
the poets have not used it more. It can wait. 
There will be more poets. And he who takes 
this word as the key-note of some song or son- 
net, and writes a song or a sonnet, the music 
of whose strain shall do justice to its affluent 
significance, will be remembered at all fire- 



216 



STREET THOUGHTS. 



sides, and will be immortal if he Trrite nothing 
else. 

Meanwhile, to our readers wc say, — in its 
highest and holiest and heartiest sense of sup- 
plication, — 

Good Bye ! 



27 Jnly 1859, 



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